The Texas Attorney General’s Office told sometimes skeptical Texas Supreme Court justices Monday that El Paso’s Annunciation House migrant shelters are harboring undocumented immigrants and can’t use Catholic religious beliefs as a legal justification for its actions.
“Annunciation House is not immunized because of its religion,” Assistant Attorney General Ryan Baasch said in oral arguments over the agency’s appeal of an El Paso court ruling that blocked efforts to force the Catholic nonprofit to turn over records or face potential closure.
“Do you disagree that this is religious activity?” Justice Debra Lehrmann asked Baasch.
“It may be, and then there’s going to be a question of whether the activity at issue here substantially burdens the religious activity,” Baasch replied.
“If it’s a religious activity, how could it not substantially burden it? I think you want to shut it down?” Justice Jeff Boyd asked.
“The substantiality would be a big part of that inquiry, and I don’t think that there’s enough facts on the record here to determine if the burden has been substantial,” Baasch said.
The Texas Supreme Court is hearing the attorney general’s appeal of 205th District Judge Francisco Dominguez ruling in July, when he rejected what he called “outrageous and intolerable” actions by Paxton’s office in seeking to potentially strip Annunciation House of the right to operate in Texas.
The state’s highest civil court is considering several issues, including whether Annunciation House’s provision of offering hospitality to people who entered the country illegally violates a state law against harboring undocumented immigrants, and whether the attorney general’s efforts to compel Annunciation House to produce records violates the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits government officials from interfering with a person’s free exercise of religion.
“There has been no violation of the harboring statute because Annunciation House, an established Ministry of the Catholic Church, does not hide undocumented people from law enforcement. Hiding them is an element of the harboring statue,” Warr told the justices.
She also stressed that the vast majority of people hosted by Annunciation House are legally in the country because they were released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement while courts consider their immigration cases.
“Most of the people who we house are brought to us by ICE after they have processed them and they need a place to stay,” Warr said.
[…]
Paxton has denied that his office is interfering with religious freedom, and argued in a brief to the Texas Supreme Court that Garcia acknowledged in testimony that Annunciation House “does not offer confessions, baptisms, or communion, and makes ‘no’ efforts to evangelize or convert its guests to any religion.”
The Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops filed a brief with the Texas Supreme Court in support of Annunciation House’s arguments. The bishops said that underlying Paxton’s argument “is the notion that his office, and not the Catholic Church, is the proper arbiter of who is ‘Catholic’ enough to be a Catholic ministry.”
First Liberty Institute, one of the nation’s leading Christian conservative organizations advocating for religious liberty, also sided with Annunciation House in a brief filed with the Texas Supreme Court.
The brief said the high court previously ruled that the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act “requires the government to tread carefully and lightly when its actions substantially burden religious exercise.”
“Shuttering a religious nonprofit like Annunciation House is hardly treading lightly,” First Liberty Institute said in the brief.
The First Liberty Institute support could be helpful to Annunciation House before the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court because of its conservative background and history of successfully arguing religious freedom cases.
The El Paso Chamber and El Paso County filed briefs to the Texas Supreme Court in support of Annunciation House. The America First Legal Foundation – a nonprofit advocacy group founded by Stephen Miller, an architect of President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policies – filed a brief in support of Paxton.
See here for the previous update. A ruling is likely months away, and may wait until after a SCOTUS case that touches on some similar issues is decided. The newest member of the Supreme Court is sitting this out, for reasons that were not specified. I’m generally not a fan of statutes like the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is based on the national law and which to my mind are generally enacted to favor conservative religious interests, and the First Liberty Institute is usually a villain in these matters. That both of them stand in the way of Paxton’s crusade is more than a little ironic. If that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes. The Trib and the Chron have more.