Two Recent Supreme Court Cases

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Craig, we’re pretty excited about a couple of Supreme Court cases. They have certainly gotten your attention. We are going to talk about them briefly. One is adoption and Catholic services that also involved the LGBTQ community. The other is not having to reveal your donor list if you are a nonprofit. Preliminary remarks on why both of these cases have gotten your attention.

DR. CRAIG: I want to make clear to our audience that at Reasonable Faith we don't dabble in politics. We’re not making political commentary. But when political issues impinge upon either ethical or spiritual concerns then it is appropriate, and I think mandatory, for us to speak out. And both of these Supreme Court decisions do have those sorts of implications – implications for the exercise of religious liberty in this country, and then also implications for charitable non-profit organizations like Reasonable Faith. So that's why it's important to draw the attention of our audience to these really significant Supreme Court decisions.

KEVIN HARRIS: The first one: the foster parents that we'll discuss. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of a Catholic agency receiving government funding that argued having to work with same-sex foster parents violated their religious freedom. A major but narrow ruling that says Philadelphia's anti-discrimination laws unfairly burdened the religious agency's First Amendment rights.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. What the Supreme Court asserted here is that these Catholic adoption agencies are not obligated to place children in the homes of same-sex couples because this would violate their religious conscience. They believe, as I do, that same-sex relationships are immoral and that therefore they will not place the children in these homes. What's so interesting about this decision is that it did not divide the Court along conservative and liberal lines. This was a 9-0 decision – all of the justices agreed you cannot coerce a religious adoption agency to violate its own religious beliefs in order to comply with non-discrimination laws, in this case in Philadelphia. As it says, it was narrow in the sense that it only applied to this particular instance, but it was very significant because it overturned the lower court ruling, and it was a 9-0 decision in favor of respecting religious liberty.

KEVIN HARRIS: Key background on this, according to this article, the Supreme Court ruling comes after the Court previously upheld same-sex adoption in 2016. And after the court issued several other narrowly tailored rulings in favor of religious liberty in recent years, you think about the Colorado baker and the wedding cakes and then Hobby Lobby and their refusal to provide health insurance coverage for various contraceptive issues and things like that. So in the midst of things like that – in the midst of the mood of the country right now – boy, this is really a significant ruling.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. And, as I say, the lower courts – the district and appeals courts – had ruled in favor of Philadelphia. They had ruled in favor of forcing these Catholic adoption agencies to place these children in these homes of same-sex couples. So this 9-0 decision reverses these lower court decisions and says that if you are, for example, a Christian adoption agency that you cannot be forced by the law to violate your conscience. And in that sense, as you say, it's all of a piece with this Colorado baker case in which the man could not be coerced to put a pro-gay rights or gay marriage message on the wedding cake that he was asked to bake. They said you can't force him to violate his religious conscience and therefore they ruled in favor of religious liberty. So that's a significant trend, I think, in jurisprudence.

KEVIN HARRIS: John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the Court.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, that's right. And in this case the Chief Justice said the following, and I quote:

That this Catholic agency seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs. It does not seek to impose these beliefs on anyone else. The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with the Catholic agency for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny and violates the First Amendment.

KEVIN HARRIS: The Catholic agency really stood up to Philadelphia, and this led all the way to the Supreme Court decision. They could have caved in. There was another Christian organization – Bethany Christian services – that caved in, and they changed their policy in Philadelphia to allow same-sex couples. They had their government funding restored.

DR. CRAIG: And that last phrase – isn't that significant? – “and had its government funding restored.” Follow the money. And so to its shame, Bethany Christian services caved in on their religious convictions in order to maintain their government funding and put little children in the homes of same-sex couples despite their convictions against it. And what makes that so ironic is that the Supreme Court agreed 9-0 that this was unconstitutional, and yet because of its lack of backbone wouldn't stand up to this government imposition, this other agency kowtowed to this unconstitutional denial of our religious liberty. It's a real black mark against them, and kudos – let's give kudos to these Catholic adoption agencies for their courage in standing for religious liberty.

KEVIN HARRIS: The second case is the donor privacy case for California charities. When I first saw this I thought, “Boy, that sounds like Big Brother.” That is, the Supreme Court ruled that California may not require charities soliciting contributions in the state to report the identities of their major donors. Wow! What?

DR. CRAIG: Now, this decision did divide the court along moderate and liberal lines. The vote was 6-3 saying that California cannot require non-profit charities to reveal the names of their donors. And I thought it was interesting that the rationale for the majority decision was that California's requiring nonprofits to reveal their donor list would violate the First Amendment's protection of the freedom of association. That is, to me, just really odd. I think what does this have to do with freedom of association? But it shows how these cases set precedence that may go far beyond what the literal and limited language of the Constitution is talking about. The court is saying here that if you are a charity registered or incorporated in California, this California law requiring you to disclose the names of your donors is unconstitutional and therefore they threw out the law. Now, that cuts really close to home because one of these non-profit organizations would be, for example, Biola University, Talbot School of Theology where I teach. This law would have required Biola-Talbot to provide to the state of California a list of anybody who has donated to Biola or Talbot, and you can imagine how this could be used, say, in the Hollywood community or in the sports community or in the corporate world to blackball people who are on that donor list to a conservative evangelical Christian institution. In fact, if Reasonable Faith were incorporated in California rather than Georgia we would have been required by this law to disclose our donors, and that definitely, I think, has a chilling effect upon the potential willingness of donors to support a charity.

KEVIN HARRIS: It seems that the only dissent written by Justice Sotomayor is that this could erode disclosure laws concerning political campaigns.

DR. CRAIG: Right.

KEVIN HARRIS: And so that seems to be the only dissent.

DR. CRAIG: That's right. And Roberts and the rest of the Court said this is not applicable to political fundraising. We're talking here about non-profit charities and that therefore it was not analogous. It was remarkable when you look at the nonprofits that supported the Supreme Court's decision that filed briefs against the California law, it included a whole spectrum of people across the political spectrum from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union to conservative groups. The whole spectrum of different charitable organizations agreed that the California requirement to disclose their donor lists could have a potentially chilling effect upon their ability to find donors.

KEVIN HARRIS: This is really good news (both of these court cases) in a time when many people, particularly conservatives, are concerned about the erosion of religious liberties and how that we really need to protect religious liberties, First Amendment rights, and so on. This mitigates against the real strong naysayers that say it's all going to hell in a handbasket where these rights are never coming back and we're on our way on this greased pole. It's one thing to be cautious, but it's another just to say, “Well, it's all over.” Apparently, it's not. Apparently, we have a Supreme Court that just upheld two instances of religious liberty.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. I am so thankful for the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment in particular. It is just really exciting to see the Supreme Court taking a stance in this regard.^[1]