Supreme Court Adds Two Potentially Significant Cases to OT2024 Docket

December certiorari grants on standing and religion are early holiday gifts for Court watchers.

Today the Supreme Court granted certiorari in two potentially significant cases, one concerning-church-state relations and other Article III standing.

First up is Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, in which the petition for certiorari posed the questions presented as follows:

Wisconsin exempts from its state unemployment tax system certain religious organizations that are "operated, supervised, controlled, or principally supported by a church or convention or association of churches" and that are also "operated primarily for religious purposes."

Petitioners are Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Superior and several sub-entities. Although all agree Catholic Charities is controlled by a church—the Diocese of Superior—the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Catholic Charities is not "operated primarily for religious purposes" and thus does not qualify for the tax exemption.  Specifically, the court held that Catholic Charities' activities are not "typical" religious activities because Catholic Charities serves and employs non-Catholics, Catholic Charities does not "attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith," and its services to the poor and needy could also be provided by secular organizations.

The questions presented are:

1. 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?

2. In addressing federal constitutional challenges, may state courts require proof of unconstitutionality "beyond a reasonable doubt?"

The second grant came in Diamond Alternative Energy LLC v. Environmental Protection Agency, in which the petitioners are challenging the EPA's grant of a waiver of preemption to California's low-emission vehicle regulations. Here the Court limited the grant to the standing question raised in the petition. With that noted, here is how the petitioners framed the questions presented.

Section 209(a) of the Clean Air Act generally preempts States from adopting emission standards for new motor vehicles. 42 U.S.C. § 7543(a). But under Section 209(b) of that Act, EPA may grant California—and only California—a waiver from federal  preemption to set its own vehicle-emission standards. Before granting a preemption waiver, EPA must find that California "need[s]" its own emission standards "to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions." Id. § 7543(b)(1)(B).

In 2022, EPA granted California a waiver to set its own standards for greenhouse-gas emissions and to adopt a zero-emission-vehicle mandate, both expressly intended to address global climate change by reducing California vehicles' consumption of liquid fuel. Fuel producers challenged EPA's waiver as contrary to the text of Section 209(b). The D.C. Circuit rejected the challenge without reaching the merits, concluding that fuel producers' injuries were not redressable because they had not established that  vacating EPA's waiver would have any effect on automakers.

The questions presented are:

1. Whether a party may establish the redressability component of Article III standing by relying on the coercive and predictable effects of regulation on third parties.

2. Whether EPA's preemption waiver for California's greenhouse-gas emission standards and zero-emission-vehicle mandate is unlawful.

Note that since the Court only granted the first question presented, this means the Court is not reviewing the substance of the lower court decision rejecting challenges to EPA's grant of the waiver. Some early news reports have gotten this wrong. Should the petitioners prevail in this case, at most this would entitle them to press their merits claims against the waiver grant on remand. It would also make it easier to challenge future EPA waiver grants, perhaps including a potentially forthcoming waiver that would effectively allow California to ban the sale of gasoline-fueled vehicles by 2035.