Written by Don Byrd
Americans United for Separation of Church and State Director Rev. Barry Lynn argues that the Obama Administration has procrastinated long enough on revising faith-based hiring policies. He’s right. The current flawed approach is unacceptable.
For several years, though, Obama administration officials have said that any discriminatory hiring in federally funded programs would be assessed on a “case-by-case” basis – although they didn’t disclose what standards were to be used to make or break the “case.” Standard-less reviews are usually referred to as “doing whatever you want,” not a well-known constitutional or administrative law standard.
…
The Justice Department has acknowledged it affirmatively permitted nine grantees to use religion to discriminate in 2009 alone. There is no information on how many more of these waivers have been granted by other agencies or whether anyone’s “self-certified” assessment had been rejected.
I referred to the foot-dragging by the Administration as one of the biggest religious liberty stories in 2012, not because so much happened, but because so little has. This policy should be reversed. Failing that, the standards used by the Administration for evaluating each case should be completely transparent.
