WORLD Radio – Religious liberty in the courts
2024 legal battles for faith and freedom pave the way for major Supreme Court rulings
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This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for joining us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.
MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.
First up on The World and Everything in It: standing up for truth. Parents, churches, schools, and ministries have had to defend their right to religious expression and conviction in court quite often this year.
Joining us now to review a handful of the most significant is WORLD’s religious liberty beat reporter, Steve West.
REICHARD: Steve, good morning.
STEVE WEST: Good morning, Mary.
REICHARD: Steve, this year the Supreme Court has not issued any blockbuster rulings in the religious liberty arena. In fact, they have declined to review a number of these cases. Lower courts don’t have the discretion to decline cases, and they’ve been actively hearing religious liberty disputes. Can you hit some highlights from the year?
WEST: I’d be glad to. The main area where we have seen a lot of litigation is that of religious autonomy. Meaning, the degree to which a place of worship, religious school, or other religious organization can govern itself without the government second-guessing their operations. That includes matters of doctrine and who to employ and who can lead.
REICHARD: Who can lead … that makes me think of last year’s ruling in favor of a Fellowship of Christian Athletes FCA student group at a high school in San Jose.
WEST: That was a big win.
COURT: The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is now in session.
In 2023, a federal appeals court upheld the right of a California high school chapter of the FCA to require its student leaders be Christians. But it was this year that the ruling really hit home, as a court settlement required the school district to pay the club nearly $6 million in attorneys’ fees and damages.
REICHARD: So that’s leaders … but what about if a church or school wants all its employees to be of the same faith?
WEST: That’s less clear. There’s good news. A federal appeals court ruled in favor of a Roman Catholic school in North Carolina and said the school had a constitutional right to choose teachers that uphold its religious beliefs. It did so by likening teachers to ministers. But a gospel rescue mission in Washington and youth ministry in Oregon continue to battle state authorities who don’t accept their view that all employees must support the mission’s beliefs and standards of conduct. Not just those in minister-like roles.
REICHARD: I’m assuming that what’s driving most of this is gender ideology.
WEST: That’s right. Many states and municipalities have expanded their public accommodation laws to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Then they seek to apply them to Christian schools and ministries. Mixed results there.
In Michigan, a federal appeals court allowed a religious medical nonprofit and a Catholic parish and school to challenge a public accommodation law. That law was interpreted by courts to cover sexual orientation and gender identity. But that’s not always the case.
NEWS CENTER MAINE: A Christian school in Bangor is suing Maine’s education commissioner and other state officials over an anti-discrimination policy around gender and sexuality.
Authorities in Maine have been very aggressive about their anti-discrimination law. Christian parents there are still embroiled in a dispute over the state’s discrimination over tuition support for private schools.
Eventually, the Supreme Court is going to have to weigh in again on the scope of religious autonomy under the First Amendment.
REICHARD: I know it’s not a First Amendment concern, but there seems to be more emphasis on parental rights. What’s going on in this area?
WEST: This has certainly come to the forefront with the emphasis on so-called gender-affirming environments in schools.
Parental rights have been at the forefront of countering attempts by some public school districts to promote controversial gender ideology. Schools argue that parents’ rights end at the schoolhouse door, while parents contend they have interests that overlap with those of school administrators.
Parents have a constitutional right to direct the upbringing, education, and health care of their children—a right long recognized by the Supreme Court. But the breadth of that right is unclear.
REICHARD: One thing’s for sure: School board meetings are no longer run-of-the-mill, routine affairs, it seems. Lots of community participation.
WEST: There sure is … and often, a lot of contentiousness. Lawsuits show the concerns.
SAINT LOUIS PARK SCHOOL BOARD MEETING: this is our regular business meeting of the Saint Louis Park School Board.
Some lawsuits focus on curriculum.
SAINT LOUIS PARK SCHOOL BOARD MEETING: Our primary concern is that our children are encountering material that’s sexualized and not age-appropriate in a school environment.
After facing a lawsuit, a Minnesota school district allowed Somali American Muslim families—and others with religious objections—to opt their children out of LGBTQ curriculum.
But the Supreme Court is still considering whether to review a federal appeals court ruling that sided with a Maryland school district that refused to allow religious families to opt children out of LGBTQ materials.
REICHARD: I know some of these religious liberty disputes are really framed as free speech issues.
WEST: Yes, and again, these are often the result of aggressive efforts to push transgender ideology.
Students, parents, teachers, and professors have raised free speech concerns over school districts’ pronoun policies or policies barring students from “misgendering” or censoring conservative viewpoints.
I expect these kinds of battles to continue into 2025, yet it is promising that a number of cases settled late in the year on terms favorable to teachers or others with free speech claims.
REICHARD: So, looking ahead at 2025, as you were just doing, what’s on your radar?
WEST: Huge for me is religious autonomy and, specifically, the right of religious organizations to employ only co-religionists. That issue is still winding its way through courts of appeal.
The Supreme Court just accepted a Wisconsin case that may flesh some things out. The state has a religious exemption from some state unemployment taxes. The controversy comes from the way it defines who is religious enough to qualify for the tax exemption: it has to be an organization run by a church or church association and it has to be operated for “primarily” religious purposes.
That’s where the questions begin: Can the government decide what’s a church, and what is sufficiently “religious” to qualify? It’s a fundamental question—how much can the government do to define what counts as religion?
APACHE STRONGHOLD PRESS CONFERENCE: First of all I’d like to thank the attorneys for their tremendous work.
And that brings me to Apache Stronghold v. United States, another case the court has agreed to review. The question is whether the government’s plan to allow copper mining in Oak Flat, a site sacred to Apaches and other Native American groups, violates religious freedom protections.
APACHE STRONGHOLD PRESS CONFERENCE: We heard it loud and clear in this country. That anything on federal land is not safe.
The appeals court ruled this wasn’t a substantial burden on religious liberty. That seems problematic. It’s one thing to say the government may have an interest so compelling that it overrides a religious liberty concern, but quite another to say this wasn’t even a substantial burden. For Christians, this amounts to saying destroying a historic church is not a burden on religious liberty.
I think these cases, and others should the court accept them, offer the court the opportunity to better define what counts as religion, what counts as a burden on religion, and how important religion is in the constitutional scheme.
REICHARD: I thought we knew the answer to those questions.
WEST: Apparently not. But I think the real question is: Are we still religious enough as a society to value religion as something paramount in the Constitution, something at the very heart of who we are? We’ll have to see. You know, these are all defensive moves to shore up space for religious expression and witness—all important—but our prayer should be for more, for not only the defense of but advance of the Gospel.
REICHARD: Good reminder. Have to be the change to see the change. Steve, thanks so much.
WEST: Happy New Year Mary.
WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.
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