WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court concluded its 2024-2025 term, which included cases on topics such as the scope of authority of federal judges, immigration, and religious liberty. When the court begins its 2025-2026 term, it will again hear cases concerning religious liberty.
John Bursch, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel and vice president of appellate advocacy, told OSV News that the high court has recently shown a trend of “vigorously protecting religious liberty,” and such cases will continue.
“We sometimes think of this court as being divided six feet between conservatives and liberals, but there have been several unanimous religious liberty cases, and Catholic Charities was just the latest,” Bursch said in reference to Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission. The ruling overturned a decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court after the Catholic agency argued the state court wrongly discounted its religious identity in denying it an exemption from paying into the state’s unemployment benefit program available to employers that operate primarily for religious purposes.
“This term showed the court’s strong commitment to religious liberty and to the idea that Americans shouldn’t have to leave their faith at the door when they enter public life,” Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, told OSV News.
Among the religious liberty cases heard by the court during its recently concluded term were Mahmoud v. Taylor and St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond. In Mahmoud, the court ruled in favor of an interfaith group of Maryland parents who sought to opt their children out of classroom instruction pertaining to books containing LGBTQ+ themes to which they object on religious grounds.
Mahmoud, Rienzi said, “was a historic victory reaffirming the right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children.”
“The court made clear that parents don’t surrender that right just because they use public schools,” he added.
In the St. Isidore case, a deadlocked court sidestepped a major ruling over what would have been the nation’s first Catholic charter school. The 4-4 split effectively blocked the effort by leaving in place a ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which found the establishment of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School as a publicly-funded religious school was unconstitutional.
“St. Isidore left open the critical question of whether religious groups can participate equally in charter school programs,” Rienzi said. “While that was disappointing, the court is likely to revisit the issue soon.”
Other major cases included the high court’s first significant foray into the issue of state laws banning certain types of medical or surgical gender reassignment procedures for minors who identify as transgender. In United States v. Skrmetti, the court found that a Tennessee law restricting gender transition treatments, including puberty blockers for minors, did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
The court also found in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic that there is not a private right to bring a lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s decision to end Planned Parenthood’s participation in the state’s Medicaid program, likely paving the way for other states to remove the nation’s largest single abortion provider from their Medicaid programs.
Bursch, who argued the case before the court, said the ruling was “an unqualified victory for states that want to be able to defund Planned Parenthood” or “other abortion providers in their state.”
Federal law generally prohibits the use of Medicaid funds for abortion. However, supporters of allowing Planned Parenthood to receive Medicaid funds point to that group’s involvement in cancer screening and prevention services — such as pap tests and HPV vaccinations — but critics argue the funds are fungible and could be used to facilitate abortion.
