California should be barred from taxing books, tapes and other merchandise sold by television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart's ministry and any other religious group, the Supreme Court was told Tuesday.
"With religious organizations, the requirement of the Constitution is for the government to keep its hands off," argued Michael McConnell, a Chicago lawyer representing Jimmy Swaggart Ministries."A religious organization carrying out its religious function cannot be the occasion for fund raising by the state," McConnell contended.
He said the Constitution's First Amendment, which protects "the free exercise" of religion, bars such taxation.
But California Deputy Attorney General Richard Nielsen told the justices that "Swaggart is using the free-exercise clause as a sword" in fighting a tax imposed on all sales of tangible goods.
In other developments, the Supreme Court:
- Ruled against a Nebraska agency's policy forcing public employees who supervise the mentally retarded to undergo testing for AIDS. The justices, who have never ruled on the lawfulness of AIDS testing, let stand decisions that blocked the agency from imposing mandatory blood testing of employees who come into direct contact with the mentally retarded people the agency serves.
- Agreed to settle a dispute in which federal protection for 30 million American workers' pensions could be at stake. The court will decide what authority the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has to order employers to revive scrapped pension plans.
- Agreed to decide whether the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and perhaps other multistate agencies, may be sued in federal courts.
- Said it will use a Chicago drug case to consider expanding the authority of police to search homes without court warrants.
- Was urged during an oral argument session to strike down as "taxation without representation" a federal judge's order that doubled local property taxes to pay for racially desegregating Kansas City, Mo., public schools.
- Heard arguments over a challenge to the partial merger of Detroit's two daily newspapers.
- Rejected, in a Virginia case, arguments that states must not favor the clergy over secular humanists in licensing people to perform weddings.
- Barred a lawsuit against the Christian Science church by a Michigan couple whose 15-month-old boy died after they, as church members, were counseled to rely on faith healing and avoid seeking medical help.
The AIDS testing case focused on the Nebraska agency's 1987 policy requiring some employees to submit to blood testing for the virus associated with acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
The disease attacks the body's immune system, rendering it incapable of resisting infections. The virus most often is spread through close contact with blood, blood products or semen from infected persons.