A coalition of religious liberty advocates, discrimination watchdogs and others – including the Baptist Joint Committee and many who led the effort to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – have sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to overturn a misinterpretation of that law by the Bush Administration. After Congress repeatedly voted down legislative efforts to allow religious discrimination in hiring with tax dollars, the Justice Department under President Bush asserted a novel and dangerous reading of RFRA in the final years of Bush's second term that in fact allowed such discrimination by Executive Order.

Today's letter, signed by the BJC and 57 other groups, assails the underlying Office of Legal Counsel Memo as "far-fetched" (my emphasis):

The OLC Memo wrongly asserts that RFRA is “reasonably construed” to require that a federal agency categorically exempt a religious organization from an explicit federal nondiscrimination provision tied to a grant program.  Although the OLC Memo’s conclusion is focused on one Justice Department program, its overly-broad and questionable interpretation of RFRA has been cited by other Federal agencies and extended to other programs and grants.  The guidance in the OLC Memo is not justified under applicable legal standards and threatens to tilt policy toward an unwarranted end that would damage civil rights and religious liberty.

The OLC Memo, however, stands as one of the most notable examples of the Bush Administration’s attempt to impose a constitutionally questionable and unwise policy—RFRA should not be interpreted or employed as a tool for broadly overriding statutory protections against religious discrimination or to create a broad free exercise right to receive government grants without complying with applicable regulations that protect taxpayers.

In my post earlier about the White House's Faith-Based Office and the question of hiring discrimination that has dogged it, I suggested that the delay seems reasonable to me, but eventually church-state advocates would hold the Obama Administration's feet to the fire on this issue. I guess I was right!