From what I understand, the issue is that the advertising may have created a broad impression that it was a general-purpose children’s charity, while in practice the organization’s funding primarily supports a narrower religious and educational network. The court’s concern was that this could be misleading to donors unless key information was disclosed in the advertising itself. This fits a broader pattern in charity regulation, where regulators intervene when fundraising messages materially misrepresent or omit important information about how donations are used. A comparable example in terms of enforcement logic is scrutiny of organizations like Wounded Warrior Project, where questions were raised about the gap between public fundraising messaging and actual spending breakdowns. TLDR: charity regulators frequently act when advertising creates a materially misleading impression about beneficiaries or use of funds.
Catholic Charities have, like many other large nonprofit networks in the U.S., occasionally been subject to regulatory scrutiny over fundraising disclosures, reporting, or program spending. These cases are part of general charity regulation rather than something specific to Catholic (or Jewish) organizations.
And yet its uncontested in the fact that it is a children's charity, it is raising funds for youths. Tutoring, summer camps, trips overseas for children. They split hairs in the decision over the age range of the children which was incredibly nitpicky- arguing that using children aged ~11 in ads when its children aged ~17 receiving funds. That's baloney and they know it.
But the meat of the argument and what they explicitly ruled on is that it was raising money for
jewish children, and they didn't affirmatively disclose in every ad that it benefits the jews
They created a prior restraint that jewish charities can't advertise without disclosing that they are jewish, and that doesn't match any existing law or regulation.
Again, there is an infinite number of criterion you
could establish, that wasn't being disclosed. If they could establish that no money ever went to quadriplegic or blind children, must a charity disclose in its ads that its ableist? If they only donate money towards children in northern and east coast states, should aggrieved southerners be allowed to sue on grounds that its those damn yankees taking our money? And yet, we already have examples of other protected classes like a black children's charity in california that advertises as raising money for children- no mention that its going exclusively to black kids.
So any arbitrary undisclosed classes and disproportionate impacts could be invented. And we know other established protected classes don't need to disclose their criterion. And yet, the jews got singled out with a judge unironically saying they must expressly, audibly disclose their jewishness