Today's NYTimes reports on pending legislation – the reauthorization of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration – that includes a religious discrimination provision receiving attention. The section in question would require religious groups that receive government grants for providing such services to refrain from discriminating when hiring for positions paid for with those federal funds. Typically, religious institutions are allowed to discriminate, thanks to an exemption in the Civil Rights Act. But with federal funding comes federal rules, and legislation often explicitly – like in the case of Head Start – bars discrimination with such funds.
Congress does that in support of a very simple and appropriate constitutional principle: taxpayer funds should not go to pay salaries that are available only to people of a certain religious perspective. If you are going to depend on the government to keep part of your social service up and running, people of all faiths should be eligible for those jobs. We know, after all, that the work being funded is not explicitly religious, or else federal money couldn't be used for it in the first place.
Protestors, though, see the proposed language as a threat:
In a letter sent Wednesday to all members of Congress, the groups contend that the provision would dilute protections they have under the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as under the Constitution.
“Those four lines in the legislation would be a seismic change in bedrock civil rights law for religious organizations,” said Steven McFarland, chief legal counsel at World Vision USA, a Christian aid organization that is leading the protest. “The impact would be huge and severely affect our ability to help children and others in need.”
As I mentioned above, attaching strings to federal funding is not a new Congressional idea, and is a perfectly good reason for religious organizations to forgo government grants altogether, avoiding the dilemma. The protections that truly face dilution are the First Amendment freedoms of every taxpayer, who should not have our funds restricted to people of certain religious beliefs.
View the legislation – HR 5466 – here. The relevant language (via Religion Clause) reads:
CONSIDERATION OF RELIGION IN EMPLOYMENT DECISIONS- With respect to any activity to be funded (in whole or in part) through an award of a grant, cooperative agreement, or contract under this title or any other statutory authority of the Administration, the Administrator, or the Director of the Center involved, as the case may be, may not make such an award unless the applicant agrees to refrain from considering religion or any profession of faith when making any employment decision regarding an individual who is or will be assigned to carry out any portion of the activity. This paragraph applies notwithstanding any other provision of Federal law, including any exemption otherwise applicable to a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society.
