Written by Don Byrd
A letter signed by 130 organizations including the Baptist Joint Committee urged President Obama today to instruct Attorney General Loretta Lynch to reconsider a memo from 2007 interpreting federal law to allow groups that receive federal funding to discriminate in hiring based on religion using those funds. Issued under the previous administration, the 2007 OLC Memo argued that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) overrides statutory nondiscrimination provisions.
From the groups’ letter:
RFRA was intended to provide protection for free exercise rights, applying strict scrutiny, on a case-by-case basis, to federal laws that substantially burden religious exercise. RFRA was not intended to create blanket exemptions to laws that protect against discrimination.
Yet, in contrast to this, the OLC Memo relies on flawed legal analysis and wrongly asserts that RFRA is “reasonably construed to require” a federal agency to categorically exempt a religiously affiliated organization from a grant program’s explicit statutory non-discrimination provision, thus permitting the grantee to discriminate in hiring with taxpayer funds without regard to the government’s compelling interest in prohibiting such discrimination.
The letter, which was also signed by Americans United, American Baptist Home Mission Societies, and the Interfaith Alliance, goes on to explain the “far-reaching consequences” of this “broad and erroneous interpretation of RFRA.”
As a candidate, President Obama was clear in his view that religious hiring discrimination with federal funds should come to an end. It is time to fulfill that promise. You can read the letter and view all 130 signatories, here.
