The Wisconsin Supreme Court will review a case in which a state panel determined that the Catholic Charities Bureau in Superior, Wisconsin, and its subsidiaries aren’t “religious” enough to opt out of the state’s unemployment insurance program.
The acceptance came a little more than three months after the appeal was filed and after several years of wrangling between Catholic Charities and the state’s Labor and Industry Review Commission over unemployment-insurance programs.
Catholic Charities says it has a right to a religious exemption from the state program, which it says also has a higher cost than a church-run system providing equivalent benefits.
The state agency argued that because the charity units serve people of all faiths and no faith, and does not evangelize, the exemption does not apply. The state’s 3rd District Court of Appeals sided with the labor agency.
“We’re very optimistic,” Nick Reaves, a counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty involved with the case, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
“Simply by granting this case, it suggests that they might be interested in reversing the decision below, which we think is a problematic decision,” he said.
The Catholic Charities Bureau “would like to stop paying into the state programs so that they can join the Wisconsin Catholic Church’s program, which is a more efficient and more cost-effective program,” Mr. Reaves said.
Bishop James Powers of the Diocese of Superior said in a statement that the state board’s ruling is in error because serving all is itself a religious imperative.
“Catholic Charities Bureau, our Diocese’s social ministry arm, carries on the work of Christ by reflecting gospel values; everything they do advances the mission of the Church,” Bishop Powers said. “This backbone of our Diocesan ministry has, for over a century, served those who have been forgotten, ignored, and pushed to the margins of society.”
Mr. Reaves said the case raises religious free exercise issues for the Catholic Church and other religious groups, an argument the appeals court rejected earlier this year.
He said the state “is punishing Catholic Charities for the way it’s organized itself, by choosing to serve all those in need, by choosing to organize as a separate charity, instead of serving as just part of the [local] Catholic Diocese.”
The labor commission’s ruling, he said, “invades what’s called the internal religious autonomy of Catholic Charities Bureau, because it’s basically telling a religious organization how it needs to organize itself, how it needs to exercise its mission and its ministry, in order to qualify for this religious exemption.”
Labor and Industry Review Commission general counsel Antia J. Krasno told The Washington Times in an email that the agency “does not comment on pending litigation.”
The state Supreme Court did not immediately set a date to hear the case but Mr. Reaves said he expects to “probably have arguments sometime in the next few months.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.