The White House scheme to funnel tax dollars to religious ministries — Bush’s “faith-based” initiative — never passed Congress, but the Bush administration is nevertheless dolling out millions through the executive branch.
At least, it was. A new federal court ruling has dealt the initiative a significant setback.
The federal agency that oversees AmeriCorps must stop financing programs that place volunteers in Catholic schools, a judge has ruled, saying it unconstitutionally crosses the line between church and state.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler sided with the American Jewish Congress, which argued that federal money was being used improperly to pay for teaching of Christian values through programs such as the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education. Kessler’s decision late Friday was posted on the court’s Web site Tuesday.
For critics of Bush’s faith-based scheme (including me), this is exactly what we wanted. It was a fairly clear-cut case: the federal government was paying “volunteers” to work in a private religious school and promote a religious curriculum. The administration, for some reason, insisted this was perfectly consistent with the principle of church-state separation. Kessler didn’t see it that way.
[Kessler ruled] that the line between the secular and nonsecular activities had become “completely blurred.” She noted that the government did not monitor the programs enough to ensure the activities were mostly nonsecular.
“Such direct government involvement with religion crosses the vague but palpable line between permissible and impermissible government action under the First Amendment,” Kessler wrote.
This is a ruling that could have a significant impact.
First, there’s the short-term effect. Three AmeriCorps programs, which have received hundreds of thousands of tax dollars in recent years, will have to accommodate the court ruling.
Secondly, and more importantly, if the ruling is upheld, the rationale behind Bush’s entire initiative is in serious trouble.
The ruling could have broader implications for President Bush’s “faith-based initiative,” which seeks to award federal grants to religious organizations to provide social services. Supporters say the groups provide much-needed help to government agencies, but the effort has stalled in Congress because of debate over its constitutionality.
Marc Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, said the ruling could open the door to additional litigation against some of Bush’s grants to religious groups, since the decision places a heavier burden on government to ensure federally funded programs don’t promote religion.
“This is one case that shouldn’t have had to be brought, since the constitutional violation in paying parochial school teachers to teach religion is so obvious,” Stern said. “One wonders what the government has been thinking all these years.”
If the Bush administration can’t indirectly subsidize religious ministries through faith-based grants, then there is no faith-based initiative. It’s as simple as that.
And just as an amusing aside, I thought it’d be fun to mention that the legally dubious AmeriCorps funding was driven in part by a Bush-appointee who gained notoriety as an activist for evangelist Sun Myung Moon.
Moon’s influence with the Bush administration may only continue to escalate. In December, Bush appointed a Moon operative, David Caprara, to head AmeriCorps VISTA, the national community service organization.
Caprara formerly ran the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development and also worked at a Moon front group called the American Family Coalition. He frequently appears at Moon events, most recently speaking at an Oct. 29 [2003] ministers’ workshop in Ocean City, Md., that was sponsored by yet another Moon-related group, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.