The Advocate

What the Supreme Court Actually Decided About Your Faith, and What It Did Not

Begin with what the rulings did not say, because that is where the panic lives. Depending on which corner of the internet you read, this Supreme Court is either dismantling the wall between church and state brick by brick, or it is the last shield between American believers and open season. Both stories are for sale. Neither survives contact with the record.

So here is the record, in plain English, with dates. What the Court has actually decided for religious believers over its last two terms, what it deadlocked on, what it refused to hear, and the case this June where the most religious liberty friendly Court in memory ruled against the believer.

That last one is the tell. If you can explain why the same six justices who sided with praying parents in Maryland sided against a shaved Rastafarian in Louisiana, you understand this Court better than most of the people yelling about it.

Start with the wins, precisely stated. In the term that ended in July 2025, the Court decided Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission, overturning a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that had denied the Catholic agency a religious exemption from the state unemployment system after discounting its religious identity. Alliance Defending Freedom's John Bursch noted it was one of several unanimous religious liberty rulings: liberal and conservative justices, together. That same term produced Mahmoud v. Taylor, where the Court ruled for an interfaith group of Maryland parents, Muslim and Christian alike, who sought to opt their children out of classroom instruction using books with LGBTQ themes they objected to on religious grounds. Becket's Mark Rienzi called it a reaffirmation that parents do not surrender the right to direct their children's religious upbringing "just because they use public schools."

Now the non-wins the panic merchants skip. In St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, the Court split four to four, which decides nothing and left standing the Oklahoma ruling that blocked the nation's first religious charter school. The question of whether religious groups can participate equally in charter programs remains open. The Court also declined to hear Apache Stronghold v. United States, the Oak Flat sacred site case, over the objections of many religious liberty advocates; a petition for rehearing was pending as of last summer. And on June 23 of this year, in Landor v. Louisiana, the Court ruled six to three that a Rastafarian man whose dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by prison guards cannot seek money damages from those officials under the federal statute protecting prisoners' religious exercise. The believers lost that one, on the Court's view of how spending statutes bind individuals.

Concede the fair point to the worried side: the ground really has moved fast. As Erwin Chemerinsky documents, in nine days of June 2022 the Court held in Carson v. Makin that states subsidizing secular private education must extend the same aid to religious schools, and in Kennedy v. Bremerton that a coach's postgame prayer was protected speech and free exercise, declaring the old Lemon test overruled. Whatever you think of those rulings, and this publication thinks well of them, people who say the doctrine changed quickly are describing the record, not inventing it.

But speed is not the same as a rigged game, and the scoreboard shows a Court that rules for religious claimants when the law supports them and against them when it concludes the law does not. Catholic Charities was unanimous. Landor went the other way. St. Isidore hung. That is a court, not a chaplaincy.

The pluralist point is the one to carry to dinner: every one of these liberties is faith blind. Mahmoud's plaintiffs included Muslim parents. Landor's plaintiff wore dreadlocks for a vow most Christians have never taken. The rule that protects them is the rule that protects you, and the day it stops protecting them, your protection is next on the table.

What remains undecided matters most for the year ahead. The Court took up a challenge to Colorado's ban on counseling conversations with minors about gender and sexuality, a case about faith based pregnancy centers facing a New Jersey attorney general's demand for donor information, and the charter school question will return. As of mid June, the biggest decisions of the current term were still coming. We will report each one the same way: holding first, vote, date, panic last. If that is the kind of coverage you want in your inbox, this is the moment to subscribe, and if you cannot subscribe, share this piece with the friend who keeps forwarding you the panic.