I'm John Batchel with my good colleague. Professor Richard Epstein teaches law at NYU in the University of Chicago.

It teaches me when I'm lucky enough to have a conversation with him.

And right now we're commenting on three unanimous decisions by the Supreme Court.

This, Supreme Court.

This, Supreme Court backs Catholic charities in tax exemption case that could impact other religiously affiliated organizations.

Wisconsin Supreme Court said Catholic charities, unlike the church, had to pay into the state and unemployment fund because its activities were, quote,

primarily charitable and secular in nature.

The Supreme Court has pushed aside that decision.

Are you surprised at this, Professor?

We have a few minutes.

No, I'm not surprised at this because I think the recent trend in all the cases where they have been decisioned have always supported these religious

organizations to the extent that they're making claims for liberty rather than demanding some

kind of a government subsidy. And I think the decision is absolutely correct. You do not want to be

sitting around telling somebody how it is that they ought to run their internal institutions.

These are Catholic charities and they take all their Catholic doctrine very seriously.

And that's all you need to do in order to my mind to establish the exemption.

You recall there was a decision several years in New York State to tell the Yeshiva University

that it had to allow clubs for gay orientation as memberships in its

organization. And they said, well, you have to do that if you do everybody else, a kind of a

bogus equal protection claim. I actually submitted, or in my name, a brief was written,

saying this is a terrible decision. And so what happened is they thought, oh, they're just bluffing

if they're going to have to let these guys, and they thought, oh, they're just bluffing if they're going

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