Written by Don Byrd
Friday, as I posted earlier, the White House issued important guidelines to agencies on how to administer church-state reforms and safeguards adopted more than a year ago. They are important because there has been some question as to whether agencies are actually following the rules with regard to federally-funded entities. These new guidelines, enforcement provisions, and training suggestions help ensure that they will.
Many advocates, though, are rightfully noting what is notably *not* in the President’s guidelines or executive order: a clarification barring the use of federal funds to discriminate in hiring.
Rabbi David Saperstein, who directs the Washington office of the Union for Reform Judaism and served on the advisory council, said the new guidance is “a great step forward,” but he and others remain unsatisfied with the administration’s apparent silence on addressing the ability of federally funded organizations to discriminate on the basis of religion when hiring or firing staff.
The White House has previously said the issue would be handled on a case-by-case basis and has resisted finalizing any formal policy.
“We do hope that the president will move expeditiously to ensure that no one is discriminated against when it comes to hiring with tax dollars,” Saperstein said.
The guidelines *do* indicate that programs funded with federal money should be kept separate to ensure they are not used to proselytize or indoctrinate. But they also reiterate the importance of ensuring a religious organization’s “identity”, which generally refers to the ability of religious organizations to maintain an identity through hiring and other mechanisms.
For all the positive progress indicated by the adopted reforms and these guidelines, the issue of religious hiring remains a hurdle in religious freedom.
