How far astray is the 4-3 liberal Badger State majority? Justice Sotomayor reversed it for a unanimous High Court.

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By The Editorial Board – June 9, 2025 at 5:42 pm ET – WSJ

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A view of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Madison. PHOTO: VINCENT ALBAN/REUTERS

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s unanimous opinion last week in favor of a Catholic Charities nonprofit was a good win for religious liberty, and we’ve already discussedwhat it says about the Supreme Court. Permit us to add a final thought, which is that the 9-0 decision is a humiliation for the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new 4-3 liberal majority.

The state jurists had denied a religious tax exemption to a local diocese’s Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) and associated groups. Their activities were “secular in nature” and didn’t involve teaching the faith or supplying religious materials, the Wisconsin court said. It rejected almost out of hand the First Amendment argument that ultimately won the day.

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“CCB and the sub-entities have not identified how the payment of unemployment tax prevents them from fulfilling any religious function,” the state court held. “Because CCB and the sub-entities have failed to demonstrate that the statute imposes a constitutionally significant burden on their religious practice, we need not address the petitioners’ argument that the statute violates principles of neutrality.”

But as Justice Sotomayor writes in her opinion for the unanimous reversal, if a state law treats two religious soup kitchens differently, depending on the amount of prayer and proselytizing before lunch, that’s a violation of the First Amendment. “It is fundamental to our constitutional order that the government maintain ‘neutrality between religion and religion,’” she says. “There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one.”

Ouch. The four liberal Wisconsin judges can’t say they weren’t warned, because they were—by their conservative colleagues. “The majority’s activism renders the exemption unconstitutional,” the principal dissent said. The ruling “looks through a seemingly Protestant lens to deem works of charity worthy of the exemption only if accompanied by proselytizing—a combination forbidden by Catholicism, Judaism, and many other religions.”

Don’t expect this 9-0 smackdown to temper the unrestrained ambitions of Wisconsin’s four leftwing Justices. But in the debates to come, keep in mind how their mangling of religious liberty lost even Justice Sotomayor.