SCOTUSblog by Amy Howe 2/24/2020
The Supreme Court returned from its winter recess today with just one new grant from last week’s private conference, but the newest addition to the court’s merits docket is a significant one. Next term the justices will hear oral argument in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a challenge by several foster parents and Catholic Social Services to the city’s policy of cutting off referrals of foster children to CSS for placement because the agency would not certify same-sex couples as foster parents. After they lost in the lower courts, the challengers went to the Supreme Court, where they asked the justices to weigh in on three questions: what kind of showing plaintiffs must make to succeed on this kind of religious discrimination claim; whether the Supreme Court should reconsider its 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith, holding that the government can enforce laws that burden religious beliefs or practices as long as the laws are “neutral†or “generally applicableâ€; and whether the government violates the First Amendment when it makes participation by a religious social-services agency in the foster-care system contingent on actions and statements by the agency that conflict with the agency’s religious beliefs.
Elsewhere on today’s order list, the justices asked the federal government for its views on Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra and Thomas More Law Center v. Becerra, a pair of challenges to a policy of the California attorney general’s office that requires registered charities to disclose the names and addresses of their major donors. The lawsuits were filed by a pair of conservative advocacy groups, who argued that the policy violates the First Amendment, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled for the state. There is no deadline for the federal government to file its brief.
The justices sent Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Juan v. Feliciano, a case involving the First Amendment, the rights of religious organizations and the extent to which courts must defer to how those organizations have structured themselves, back to the Puerto Rico Supreme Court for another look. The case arose when a pension fund for Catholic school employees in Puerto Rico stopped making payments, prompting the employees to sue not only the fund, but also the Archdiocese of Puerto Rico and the Catholic church there. Courts in Puerto Rico treated all of the Catholic institutions on the island – the archdiocese, the dioceses that comprise the archdiocese and the parishes – as one legal entity and ordered nearly $5 million in assets to be seized from the churches to pay the pensions. The archdiocese asked the Supreme Court to review the ruling; in June, the justices asked the federal government for its views. The federal government told the justices that the Puerto Rico decision “violates the fundamental prohibition on denominational discrimination†and recommended that the court either vacate the lower court’s ruling and send it back for further proceedings or grant review.
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/02/justices-to-take-up-case-involving-faith-based-adoption-agencies-and-same-sex-couples/
