Faith-based discrimination

The New York Times recently published an op-ed condemning any faith-based discrimination but their own. See the response below published as a letter to the editor by my friend Stanley Carlson-Thies.

Editorial: Faith-Based Discrimination, Oct. 14 issue

President Obama promised in his campaign to preserve President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative aimed at helping social service programs sponsored by religious organizations win federal grants and contracts. He also promised a vitally important change: groups receiving federal money would no longer be allowed to hire employees on the basis of their religion.

The idea was to prevent discrimination and preserve the boundary between church and state. But Mr. Obama has not made good on the promise. His February executive order revamping the White House office for religion-based and neighborhood programs left untouched a 2002 presidential directive authorizing religious-oriented programs that receive federal financing to hire and fire on religious grounds.

Also left untouched was a constitutionally suspect 2007 memo concluding that the government cannot order religious groups not to discriminate as a condition of federal financing — even in programs like Head Start, where religious discrimination is outlawed. The memo, based on a far-fetched interpretation of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, was produced by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. That is the same outfit that wrote the memos authorizing torture.

A coalition of 58 religious, educational and civil liberties groups is now seeking to reverse the 2007 memo. A group letter last month to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. asked him to direct the current Office of Legal Counsel to review and withdraw the memo. Mr. Holder should do so, and Mr. Obama should revise his February executive order to include the anti-discrimination language that he omitted the first time around.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama drew the right line. Effective social service programs should not be ineligible for federal dollars just because they have a religious affiliation. But they should be required to abide by the same anti-discrimination laws as everyone else. Public money should not be used to pay for discrimination.

Your editorial of October 14 (“Faith-Based Discrimination”) condemns faith-based organizations that hire persons of the same beliefs for practicing “discrimination.” This is not a useful characterization.

Hiring discrimination properly refers to prejudiced decisions. When Planned Parenthood doesn’t hire a pro-life activist or a Republican Senator rejects experienced Harvard grads who are Democrats, no one yells “discrimination.” Of course not. Such decisions are based on rational assessments of whether the applicants will support the organizations’ missions.

When a Jewish organization skips over Muslim or Christian applicants for the executive director post, or a deeply Christian organization favors a Christian over a militant secularist, they are merely seeking to maintain their character and mission. The 1964 Civil Rights Act does not regard religious hiring by religious organizations to be illegal discrimination.

Nor do most federal programs—not because of any Bush executive order nor Office of Legal Counsel memo. This is long-standing practice. Perhaps that is why the President is not following your editorial’s advice.

If he bans religious hiring universally, many of the federal government’s long-standing social service partners will have to withdraw—disrupting federal services and harming many poor and distressed people.

Stanley Carlson-Thies
President, Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance