A Catholic nonprofit organization is seeking support from the U.S. Supreme Court after its own state’s highest court deemed the group “non-religious.” The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Superior does not qualify as a religious organization and is thus not exempt from paying state unemployment tax. Now, Catholic Charities is taking the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1972, a Wisconsin state labor agency determined that Catholic Charities, which has been operating under the direction of the Catholic Diocese of Superior since 1917, did not qualify for religious exemption from state unemployment taxes, classifying its operations as “charitable,” “educational,” and “rehabilitative,” not “religious.” But in 2015, a county court ruled that a subsidiary of Catholic Charities was “operated primarily for religious purposes” and was therefore exempt from the tax. Catholic Charities then sought a similar classification from the Department of Workforce Development (DWD), which denied the request. An administrative law judge, however, overturned the DWD’s decision, and the case began making its way to the state’s supreme court.

A bevy of varying state agencies and courts reached conflicting conclusions, with some finding that Catholic Charities qualified for a religious exemption to the tax due to its religious patronage and purpose, and others claiming that the organization was not exempt, since the charitable work it did was not unique to the Catholic Church. Finally, it fell to the state’s Supreme Court to render a judgment in the case. The court explained that the chief question it would answer would be the interpretation of “operated primarily for religious purposes” in the state’s constitution and would from there decide whether the state’s labor agency violated Catholic Charities’ First Amendment rights.

“In examining this question, we address first whether we must look to the purpose of the church in operating the organization or the purpose of the nonprofit organization itself in our analysis,” the court wrote. “We address second whether the organization’s motivations, activities, or both, drive the analysis of whether a purpose is ‘religious’ within the meaning of” Wisconsin’s constitution. State law exempts non-profit employees from unemployment tax if they are in “the employ of an organization operated primarily for religious purposes and operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches…”

At no point in the history of the Catholic Charities case has any state agency or court argued that the organization is not “operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches…” Instead, the difficulty has been the interpretation of “operated primarily for religious purposes” as expressed in state statute. To resolve this difficulty, the Wisconsin Supreme Court determined “to consider the purpose of the nonprofit organization, not the church’s purpose in operating the organization.”

The court acknowledged that Catholic Charities maintains that its “religious purpose” is manifest in its “motivations,” while the state labor agency contended that the organization’s “activities are paramount” instead of its motivations. The state labor agency argued that “looking at only an organization’s motivation would allow the organization to determine its own status without consideration of its actual function,” adding that “the term ‘operated,’ which appears in the statute, ‘connotes an action or activity.’”

However, the court rejected both arguments, determining instead that both “motivation” or “purpose” and “activities” or “operations” must be given equal consideration and weight. The court quickly determines that the “motivation” of Catholic Charities is, indeed, religious and Catholic. But the court ultimately determined that the “activities” of Catholic Charities are not inherently religious. “The record demonstrates that [Catholic Charities and its subsidiaries] neither attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees,” the court wrote, adding, “Both employment with the organizations and services offered by the organizations are open to all participants regardless of religion.”

Following the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision, Catholic Charities appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court last week. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Catholic Charities in this case, said in a press release, “The court said that Catholic Charities could qualify for an exemption only if it limited its hiring to Catholics and tried to convert those it served — even though the Catholic Church forbids Catholics from conditioning assistance on acceptance of the Church’s teachings.”

“It shouldn’t take a theologian to understand that serving the poor is a religious duty for Catholics,” argued Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. “But the Wisconsin Supreme Court embraced the absurd conclusion that Catholic Charities has no religious purpose. We’re asking the Supreme Court to step in and fix that mistake.”

In its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Catholic Charities asks, “Does a state violate the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses by denying a religious organization an otherwise-available tax exemption because the organization does not meet the state’s criteria for religious behavior?” The petition argues that the matter is of great importance to the U.S. Constitution, continuing:

“Acknowledging that Catholic Charities undertakes its charitable activities because of its sincerely held religious beliefs and to carry out the religious mission the bishop has given it, the court nevertheless held that Catholic Charities’ activities have no religious purpose because those activities are not, in that court’s view, ‘typical’ for a religious organization. The Wisconsin Supreme Court thought it atypical of religion that Catholic Charities does not ‘attempt to imbue’ those it helps with the Catholic faith, and that it hires employees ‘regardless of religion.’ And the court held that because Catholic Charities provides services that ‘can be provided by organizations of either religious or secular motivations,’ those services do not have a religious purpose. Put another way, it doesn’t matter if Catholic Charities gives a cup of water in Jesus’ name, because non-religious charities offer cups of water too.”

The petition noted that Wisconsin is now one of several states that “determine ‘religious purpose’ based on an assessment of whether a religious organization’s charitable activities are ‘typical’ of religion or ‘objective[ly]’ religious.” The petition continued, “And that thrusts state governments into a thicket of First Amendment questions under the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause, and the church autonomy doctrine, not least because it forces agencies and courts to second-guess the religious decisions of religious bodies.” The petition concluded, “The Court should not allow these longstanding splits to fester any longer. It should grant review on [the] questions presented.”