White House defends faith-based hiring

Christian Century, July 26, 2003

The White House has officially spelled out its reasoning for supporting religious hiring practices of faith-based organizations that some critics have found discriminatory.

Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, said federal law currently embodies at least five different approaches to hiring by faith-based groups that receive government funding. The administration, he said, wants the law clarified. "Congress currently has a thicket of laws that are very confusing at the street level for providers of social services," Towey said in a conference call with reporters in late June.

The controversial hiring issue--which critics say could lead to various kinds of discrimination--has stalled faith-based legislation on Capitol Hill and was recently debated in connection with Head Start programs.

The White House also released a nine-page booklet, "Protecting the Civil Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-based Organizations: Why Religious Hiring Rights Must Be Preserved," which Towey said has been sent to members of Congress. The booklet compares groups like the World Wildlife Fund and Planned Parenthood which receive millions in federal money each year--to faith-based groups that have a particular position or viewpoint. "A secular group that receives government money is currently free to hire based on its ideology and mission," the document reads. "Allowing religious groups to consider faith in hiring when they receive government funds simply levels the playing field by making sure that, when it comes to serving impoverished Americans, faith-based groups are as welcome at the government's table as nonreligious ones."

The various legal approaches cited in the document include "charitable choice" initiatives--such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and Community Services Block Grant programs--that allow faith-based groups to hire according to their religious beliefs and still receive federal money. It also cites cases in which federal assistance programs are subject to provisions in addition to the Civil Rights Act, which allows faith-based groups to hire employees who agree with their religious beliefs. In some of those cases, faith-based groups have forfeited that hiring restriction in order to receive government funding.

Towey said a faith-based organization that offers a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter and job training gets "completely conflicting messages" on whom it can hire if it gets government funding. "If we recognize that there are impermissible uses of public funds, like lobbying and like preaching ... we shouldn't be treating faith-based groups any different than any other organizations," he said.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a critic of the Bush administration's faith-based initiative, called the new document a "crusade" to convince Congress to permit employment discrimination on religious grounds. "It's bad constitutional analysis and unethical public policy to give religious groups an affirmative right to discriminate in hiring using tax dollars," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United.

Since 1972, civil rights law has allowed religious groups to hire only employees who share their beliefs. Critics of the president's plan, however, argue that the provision does not extend to programs run with federal money. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, said, "The president can dress his rhetoric with the language of compassion, but the simple fact remains that his executive order represents an assault on the Constitution."

A congressional foe of Bush's initiative on June 25 introduced a bill that would mandate that religious groups receiving federal money for social services cannot discriminate in hiring. The bill sponsored by Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D., Va.) would overturn portions of an executive order issued by the president last December which stipulated that any group that receives a government contract worth more than $10,000 could hire employees based on their religion.--RNS