Supreme Court Ruling Upholds White House Office on Religious Charities

Charity leaders and legal experts who oppose giving federal money to religious groups for social services say last month’s Supreme Court’s ruling is causing them to rethink their strategies.

The case, Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, centered on whether average citizens and watchdog groups have the legal right to challenge a White House unit designed to encourage governments to steer more aid to religious charities.

In a 5-to-4 decision, the court ruled that they do not, saying that only a person or organization that is directly harmed by such an office has the legal right to sue.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the case, which raised questions about the constitutionality of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, a unit established six years ago.

The decision was a blow to people who oppose the Bush administration’s work to help religious groups win government aid.

“We’re going to continue challenging the faith-based initiative and other violations of church-state separation, but it’s tougher now,” says Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Madison, Wis., charity that pursued the legal challenge. “Some religious groups may feel emboldened by the ruling, but the program can still be challenged and our work is far from over.”

The Supreme Court decision did not deal with the merits of the specific case, but focused on whether watchdog groups or individuals had legal grounds to pursue such a lawsuit, even if they were not directly harmed by the White House office’s work.

Justice Alito, joined in the majority opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, argued that citizens and charities do not have such a right. They ruled that, although the courts have allowed some such challenges previously in cases involving religion and federal money directed by Congress, the exception does not apply in this case because the White House had used its own funds for the office.

“The loss really only affected discretionary money that the executive branch uses,” Mr. Barker says. “What we need to do is find plaintiffs that are directly involved rather than just taxpayers, or find a very clear Congressional appropriation for a religious program.”

‘A Win for Thousands’

President Bush called the ruling “a win for the thousands of community and faith-based nonprofits all across the country.”

Yet Stanley Carlson-Thies, director of social-policy studies at the Center for Public Justice, a Christian think tank in Washington, and a former associate director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, says he is only cautiously pleased by the outcome.

“Because it was a case about standing to sue, rather than the substance of the faith-based initiative, it is important, though not in itself a victory,” he says. “But it does means the initiative can go forward and only certain kinds of challenges to it will be entertained.”

What may have greater impact on the White House office is the next presidential administration. The faith-based office was created by an executive order, and legislative efforts to make it a permanent office have not moved forward in Congress.

“The next president, Democrat or otherwise, is not going to dismantle the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives,” says Ira Lupu, a law professor at George Washington University and co-director of the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, a project of the Research Foundation of the State University of New York. “The whole initiative may get downplayed instead of up-played, but it won’t disappear.”

Proponents of the White House office point to the 33 states that have established their own “faith-based” offices. In more than a dozen of those states, new governors took office last year, but in all cases the offices were retained.

However, some of the new governors have faced challenges as they tried to continue to promote the efforts started by their predecessors. In March, Ted Strickland, who was elected governor of Ohio last year, called for an investigation into the financial practices of We Care America, a Christian charity in Alexandria, Va., that has received millions in federal and state money since 2002 to help small religious and other grass-roots social-service organizations expand their operations.

Amid allegations that the charity misspent state funds, Ohio has suspended payments on the $2.1-million contract with We Care America it awarded in 2005. The group was using the money to oversee delivery of $22-million in federal welfare aid to the state’s nonprofit social-service providers.

The charity, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court in December in support of the White House office and was once active in more than two dozen states, has closed its national offices and filed for bankruptcy. The charity’s phones have been disconnected and its officers and staff members could not be reached for comment.