Religious Liberty at the Supreme Court: What Every Faith-Based Organization Should Be Watching in 2026
By: Palmer Williams, Andrew W. Gould, and Claire Woynerowski
For 250 years, America's vibrant religious life has flourished under a constitutional framework that has afforded religious liberty stronger legal protections than almost anywhere else in the world. Faith-based organizations, schools, and parents continue to rely on those same constitutional guarantees to safeguard their most fundamental freedoms. And yet, as the 2025-26 term comes to an end, religious liberty continues to be one of the Supreme Court’s most actively contested issues. If this term has demonstrated anything, it is that even organizations that might never have expected to face legal challenges regarding religion should be paying attention.
Case Names to Know
Over the past year, the most highly anticipated decisions have demonstrated how the Court remains committed to upholding the First Amendment and protecting the free exercise of religion for all American’s with deeply held beliefs. Here are the case names from the past two terms that every faith-based organization should know:
Mahmoud v. Taylor
Decided during the 2024-25 term, Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case involving religious liberty and parental rights in public education, asked whether parents have the right to know about, and subsequently exempt their young children, from instruction on topics antithetical to their deeply held religious beliefs. The petitioners in this case included 300 parents from a multitude of religious backgrounds including Muslims and Christians across many denominations. These parents believed that Montgomery County Public Schools’ (MCPS) policy denying parents the ability to opt their young children out of instruction relating to gender and sexuality infringed upon their right to free exercise of religion.
In a 6-3 decision, the Court held that MCPS had in fact violated the First Amendment rights of the religious parents. First, the Court held that by refusing to allow religious parents to opt their young children out of instruction that contradicts their beliefs the school board significantly infringed on those parents’ right to instruct their children according to their religious beliefs. Next, the Court held that MCPS failed to prove that it could survive strict scrutiny review as it did not articulate a compelling state interest that validates this first amendment infringement. The County was willing to allow students to opt-out of other instructional subjects, and thus the Court ruled it did not follow that allowing students to miss this gender and sexuality instruction would cause too great a burden on MCPS.
This decision was a significant step towards protecting parents’ right to determine the religious education of their own children. Not all families are able to afford private education, and as public education is compulsory in most states, it is all the more important that parents are afforded protection to remove their children from instruction that prevents them from fully exercising their faith.
Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission
Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin, from the 2024-25 term, is a case that every religious non-profit and organization should recognize as imperative to their right to practice what they preach. In the case of the Catholic Charities Bureau, the Court recognized that judges should not be in the business of deciding if a church’s charitable activities are “religious enough” to be considering religious to be eligible for tax-exempt status.
The Catholic Charities Bureau is a ministry arm of the Diocese of Superior of the Catholic Church charged with serving the poor and vulnerable. When the ministry applied for a religious exemption from the Wisconsin Unemployment Insurance Program tax, the state ruled that their activity was not “typical” religious activity, mainly because they performed charitable acts to people of all faiths and did not promulgate Catholic teaching through their charitable work.
In the unanimous opinion, delivered by Justice Sotomayor, the Court’s ruled that the Establishment Clause prevents the government from ‘“officially prefe[ring]’ one religious denomination over another.” She wrote that the State failed to satisfy the necessary strict scrutiny test because it “fails to explain how the theological lines drawn by [the state’s unemployment tax exemption] are narrowly tailored to advance” their compelling government interest of providing unemployment coverage to citizens 2. To disallow the Catholic Charities Bureau would clearly give preference to faiths whose charity is performed exclusively within their denominations and exclusively to spread their beliefs.
This case is a win for all churches and religious organizations as it ensures that government is not involved in defining what is “real” religious activity.
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Davenport, Attorney General of New Jersey
Decided this spring, First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Davenport involved a religious non-profit targeted by a state’s for its religious beliefs. First Choice is a faith-based pregnancy resource center providing health services and counseling to pregnant women with the goal of protecting the life of the baby as well as the mother. The State of New Jersey’s “Reproductive Rights Strike Force” issued a “consumer alert” warning that groups such as First Choice were misleading consumers about abortions. Though there was no compelling justification for it, the Attorney General Davenport of New Jersey issued a subpoena requesting nearly all of First Choice’s donor information. First Choice sued, arguing that the subpoena chilled their right to speech as it dissuaded future donors from associating with the organization at the risk of their names becoming public.
The Supreme Court agreed that First Choice’s freedom to associate had been disturbed by this subpoena despite New Jersey’s argument that First Choice lacked standing as the subpoena had not yet been compelled by a state court order. To this, Justice Gorsuch correctly observed that, “The value of a sword of Damocles is that it hangs—not that it drops.” Standing is conferred not just when the injury has been realized, but also when injury is imminent, as to prevent injuries when they are foreseeable and avoidable by court action.
The ruling in First Choice ensures that faith-based organizations have the right to pursue protection of their First Amendment rights in federal court when such a subpoena is made, and does not have to wait until the subpoena is enforced.
Kaley Chiles, Petitioner v. Patty Salazar
In March 2026, the Court’s ruled in Chiles, deciding whether a law censoring certain conversations between counselors and their clients regulates conduct or violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. At issue in the case was a Colorado law preventing talk therapists from encouraging clients interested in living in opposition to their gender-identity, while allowing therapists to speak to clients about embracing their gender-identity.
Ultimately the Court held 8-1 that the law did constitute unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Justice Kagan’s concurrence summarized the dangers of viewpoint discrimination best: “A law drawing a line based on the ideology of the speaker […] skews the marketplace of ideas our society depends on to discover truth.” Regardless of the deeply held beliefs of the majority within states attempting to pass this type of legislation, it all constitutes viewpoint discrimination. The Constitution protects the ability of even medically licensed individuals to speak, and state law cannot supersede that right, or the right of the patient to seek a goal that may not be the state’s prerogative.
For religious people and organizations, Chiles further protects the constitutional right to freely communicate beliefs, including religiously motivated beliefs, even in a professional setting.
Why This Matters
The ideas presented in each of these cases are complex, nuanced, and vital to the survival and flourishing of faith-based communities and organizations. It is imperative that faith-based organizations fully understand not only the constitutional protections available to them, but also the circumstances under which those protections apply. As this term demonstrates, the Supreme Court continues to reaffirm that religious liberty is not merely a private right—it extends to the way religious organizations educate, serve their communities, hire employees, counsel individuals, and carry out their missions in the public square. These decisions create meaningful opportunities, but those opportunities are best realized by organizations that have intentionally grounded their governing documents, policies, employment practices, and day-to-day operations in their sincerely held religious beliefs. Strong legal protections are most effective when paired with thoughtful planning before a dispute ever arises.
