As I posted earlier in the week, the BJC and other religious liberty advocates are again pressing President Obama to repeal an Executive Order from President George W. Bush that allowed faith-based organizations to discriminate based on religion in hiring decisions using taxpayer money. The Bush order removed decades of religious liberty protection prohibiting discrimination with federal funds.
In a story on this issue, Religion News Service received a simple response from the White House.
Asked for comment on Wednesday, a White House spokesman said "the Justice Department continues to examine this issue on a case-by-case basis."
Apparently the White House still regards that as a sufficient approach to this problem. One of the problems is: we don't know how they evaluate these cases or how often they have evaluated them. As Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) said, in offering legislation to repeal the Bush rule:
"It is shocking that we would even be having a debate about whether basic civil rights practices should apply to programs run with federal dollars… There is just no justification for sponsors of government-funded programs to tell job applicants, 'We don't hire your kind.'"
