July 24, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Bush administration has released a report explaining why it believes religious groups have a constitutional
right to follow their beliefs when making hiring decisions, even when the organizations receive federal grants and other government funds. Critics have said the president’s view is tantamount to discrimination.
In the booklet, “Protecting the Civil Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Organizations: Why Religious Hiring Rights Must Be Preserved,” the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives said that Mr. Bush wants Congress to change federal laws that currently prevent religious organizations that receive grants from the federal government for social-service programs from considering religion when hiring. Last year, the president signed an executive order to permit religious organizations with federal contracts to take their faith “into account” when making employment decisions.
The White House noted that, in the past several decades, Congress has enacted a number of civil-rights provisions that apply to federal social-service programs.
“The problem is that, with respect to religious hiring rights, these laws are confusing, and in some cases contradictory,” the Bush administration said. “Some laws protect the hiring rights of faith-based groups that receive federal funds, and others do not. In fact, there are now at least five different — and often conflicting — approaches that Congress has applied to religious organizations that receive a federal grant.”
The White House said that the president supports pending legislation that would renew the Workforce Investment Act for job-training programs and the Head Start statute for preschool programs for needy children. The bills would remove restrictions that prevent religious organizations that participate in the programs from taking religion into account when hiring.
Critics of Mr. Bush’s plan said that it would wrongly allow religious groups to bar homosexuals and others from employment.
“When unemployment is reaching alarming levels, it’s especially disgraceful to deny someone a public job on religious grounds,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “White House staffers can try to dress this up any way they want, but it still smells like government-sponsored bigotry.”
The Bush administration paper is online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbci.
