10 Years, Zero Complaints: Michigan Cut Catholic Ministry’s Funding Anyway

Every year, faith-based ministries feed the hungry, counsel the addicted, and shelter the abandoned, often doing work no one else will. They serve their communities not despite their religious beliefs, but because of them. So what happens when a state treats that same faith as a liability rather than an asset?

In Michigan, we’re finding out. For over a decade, Catholic Charities of Ingham, Eaton & Clinton Counties ran a state-designated counseling program for vulnerable women in the Lansing region without a single complaint. Then state officials discovered the Catholic teaching behind that work, and the funding disappeared.

No audit uncovered a failure. No client came forward with a grievance. The state’s own termination letter pointed to just one thing: Catholic Charities’ “internal policies and procedures”—a bureaucratic euphemism for its religious convictions about abortion, contraception, and the sanctity of life.

The implications of this are hard to overstate. If the government can do this to a Catholic ministry in Lansing, it can do it to any ministry anywhere. It’s a test of whether the government can tell a religious organization: serve the public on our terms, or don’t serve at all.

Such actions are blatantly unconstitutional. A decade of Supreme Court decisions has made clear that the government cannot shut religious organizations out of public programs simply because of their religious character or religious exercise. Yet Michigan is doing exactly that.

What does Catholic Charities do?

Catholic Charities of Ingham, Eaton & Clinton Counties has served the Lansing region for years, operating out of two campuses: St. Vincent and Cristo Rey. Its mission statement is explicit about where that work comes from: “Rooted in Jesus’s love and guided by the teachings of the Catholic Church, we are dedicated to serving those in need through the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy.”

That mission plays out across a wide range of services. Catholic Charities provides healthcare, dental care, and mental health services. It offers financial coaching, food and clothing assistance, and prescription help. It runs adoption and foster care programs, resettles refugees, and provides immigration legal assistance. In 2025, its Refugee Services program marked 50 years of work, having resettled more than 18,000 refugees—work the state itself has recognized. Altogether, Catholic Charities serves roughly 79,000 people every year.

Cristo Rey Counseling Center is where this case begins. A ministry of Catholic Charities, Cristo Rey is state-licensed and provides counseling for individuals and families: substance use assessment and treatment, mental health therapy, parenting programs, anger management, and services for teens. For more than 10 years, it held a special designation from Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services as a Women’s Specialty Services and Enhanced Women’s Services provider—a program built specifically for pregnant women and mothers with dependent children who are working through substance use disorders.

The results speak for themselves. In 2024 and 2025 alone, Cristo Rey provided nearly 400 therapy sessions to women in the program, with a 94 percent client retention rate. It is the only provider offering these services in the Lansing region. The nearest alternative sits roughly 30 miles away—a distance that can mean the difference between a woman staying in treatment and losing access altogether.

Like the rest of Catholic Charities, Cristo Rey’s counseling reflects Catholic teaching. Rather than referring clients to abortion providers or artificial contraceptives, its staff offers natural family planning counseling and abstinence support—an approach staff are required to sign on to, spelled out in the organization’s “Core Values and Commitment to Mission” document.

For over a decade, none of this was a problem. Then the state of Michigan targeted Catholic Charities.

Michigan puts faith under review

In March 2026, Mid-State Health Network—the regional entity that manages Medicaid and federal grant funds on Michigan’s behalf—demanded a meeting with Catholic Charities. The agenda listed only two parties: Catholic Charities and Mid-State Health Network. Department of Health and Human Services officials showed up anyway.

The subject wasn’t client care. It was Catholic Charities’ “Core Values and Commitment to Mission” document, the internal pledge that asks staff to uphold Catholic teaching in their work. Mid-State Health Network obtained a copy of the policy from a disgruntled former employee and passed it along to the Department. Meeting notes confirm what came next: officials raised concerns about the pledge’s stance on abortion referrals, contraception, and gender ideology, characterizing them as inconsistent with “objective, non-judgmental client support.”

Catholic Charities explained that while staff couldn’t personally arrange referrals for services that conflict with Church teaching, clients were always free to seek “general options” elsewhere. The Department’s response: it would “review contract language before confirming whether participation can continue.”

Several days later, Mid-State Health Network adopted a new policy aimed squarely at Catholic Charities, requiring faith-based providers to disclose any “service limitations” tied to their religious beliefs. Catholic Charities tried to comply, updating its client notice to explain—plainly and upfront—that Cristo Rey doesn’t assist with contraceptive, abortion, or gender-altering services, and that clients could request a transfer at any time.

It wasn’t enough. On May 22, the Department discontinued Cristo Rey’s designation, effective immediately. The termination letter cited no client complaint, no audit finding, no quality concern, and no specific rule Cristo Rey had broken. It pointed only to Catholic Charities’ “internal policies and procedures”—language for a decision made about belief, not performance.

Catholic Charities asked the Department, in writing, to identify exactly which requirement Cristo Rey had failed to meet. That request went unanswered. Mid-State Health Network, meanwhile, ordered Catholic Charities to stop taking new clients in the state-funded program and cut off referrals altogether. So that its clients could continue receiving crucial support, Catholic Charities served its existing clients at its own expense and without charge, rather than let them fall through the cracks the state just created.

Michigan has been here before

This isn’t the first time Michigan has punished a Catholic ministry for its beliefs—and the state was already told to stop.

In 2019, Catholic Charities’ predecessor organization, St. Vincent Catholic Charities, sued the Department after officials tried to shut down its foster care and adoption ministry over its religious convictions about marriage and sexuality. A federal court sided with St. Vincent, finding that the record supported “an inference of religious targeting” and reflected “a hostility toward a religious viewpoint.” The court pointed specifically to Attorney General Dana Nessel, who had called supporters of faith-based child placement “hate-mongers” and dismissed their legal protections as rooted in “discriminatory animus.”

Elizabeth Hertel, the same Department director now overseeing Cristo Rey’s discontinuation, signed the settlement that resolved that case. She knew, firsthand, that targeting a ministry for its religious convictions crosses a constitutional line. Nessel, for her part, has publicly branded those who share Catholic Charities’ pro-life beliefs about abortion as “anti-abortion extremists” and “anti-abortion crusaders”—hardly the neutrality the Constitution demands of a state actor deciding who gets to serve the public.

None of this is incidental. It’s the same department, the same underlying hostility, and now a different program under the same Catholic ministry is paying the price.

That’s why Catholic Charities is asking a federal court to do what courts have already done in cases like this: order Michigan to stop targeting and discriminating against Catholic Charities due to its beliefs about the sanctity of life. The government cannot force religious organizations to choose between serving the public and living out their faith.

The bottom line

Cristo Rey didn’t lose its designation because it failed the women who depend on it. It lost its designation because of what it believes. The Constitution protects ministries from religious discrimination.

Catholic Charities of Ingham, Eaton & Clinton Counties v. Hertel

• March 2026: Days after a meeting with Catholic Charities, Mid-State Health Network adopted a new policy requiring faith-based providers to disclose religiously motivated service limitations.
• May 2026: Despite trying to comply with this new policy, a Discontinuation Letter was issued, stripping Cristo Rey of its Women’s Specialty Services and Enhanced Women’s Services designation.
• June 2026: Michigan failed to respond to Catholic Charities’ letter, which asked for a stay of the discontinuation, prompting Catholic Charities to file a complaint in federal court.