If you know the name of a case the Supreme Court will hear on March 31, Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, you can probably guess who will prevail.

The Court’s Republican majority almost always rules in favor of Christian litigants who seek an exemption from a federal or state law, which is what Catholic Charities is looking for in this case. (Notably, the Court’s Republicans have not always shown the same sympathy for Muslims with religious liberty claims.)

But, while the outcome in Catholic Charities seems unlikely to be a surprise, the stakes in the case are still quite high. Catholic Charities seeks an exemption from Wisconsin’s law requiring nearly all employers to pay taxes that fund unemployment benefits. If the Court grants this exemption, the justices could give many employers a broad new power to evade laws governing the workplace.

Like every state, Wisconsin taxes employers to fund benefits for workers who lose their jobs. Like most states, Wisconsin’s unemployment benefits law also contains an exemption for church-run nonprofits that are “operated primarily for religious purposes.”

The state’s supreme court recently clarified that this exemption only applies to nonprofit employers that primarily engage in religious activities such as holding worship services or providing religious education. It does not apply to employers like Catholic Charities, which provide secular services like feeding the poor or helping disabled people find jobs — even if the employer is motivated by religious faith to provide these secular services.

Catholic Charities, however, claims that it has a First Amendment right to an exemption, arguing, among other things, that Wisconsin’s limited exemption for some religious nonprofits and not others discriminates against Catholics.

None of its arguments are persuasive, at least under the Supreme Court’s existing decisions. But precedent plays hardly any role in how this Court decides religion cases. The Republican justices routinely vote to overrule, or simply to ignore, religion cases that they disagree with. The Court’s very first major decision after Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment gave Republicans a supermajority on the Court effectively overruled a decision governing worship services during the Covid-19........

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