The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday over whether states may require religiously affiliated groups like Catholic Charities to pay unemployment taxes in a case critics say could put more than 1 million US workers at risk of losing benefits.

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared sympathetic on Monday toward a bid by an arm of a Catholic diocese in Wisconsin for a religious exemption from the state's unemployment insurance tax in the latest religious rights case to reach the justices.

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared sympathetic to the argument by a Catholic Charities chapter that Wisconsin violated the Constitution when it refused to give the group the same exemption from the state’s unemployment tax that it provides to churches,