WASHINGTON (ABP) — The House of Representatives has passed another bill giving religious charities the right to discriminate in hiring, even when they receive federal funds.
On a largely party-line vote of 224 to 200, the chamber passed the Job Training Improvement Act March 2. The legislation is a reauthorization and extension of a federal job-training program that has been around since 1982. It funds local organizations that help provide unemployed people with marketable job skills.
The program's original authorizing legislation barred organizations receiving grants under it from discriminating on the basis of religion, race, gender and other categories. The new bill deletes those protections only for religious providers, and only on the basis of religion.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act already allows churches and synagogues to discriminate in hiring for most positions on the basis of religious principles. However, the courts have not definitively settled the issue of whether religious groups retain that right when hiring for a position wholly or partly funded by tax dollars.
“The bill turns back the clock on decades of civil rights protections in our job training programs. This is simply wrong,” said Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), debating the measure on the House floor.
But the bill's supporters said churches and other religious job-training agencies would be unable to maintain fidelity to their mission if not given the right to hire workers on a religious basis — even when using tax dollars.
“Our nation's faith-based institutions have a proven track record in meeting the training and counseling needs of our citizens,” said Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio). “Why would we want to deny them the opportunity to help in federal job-training efforts?”
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) offered an amendment that would have restored the bill's original 1982 language barring grant recipients from discriminating on the basis of religion. It failed on a 239-186 vote. Fourteen of his fellow Democrats crossed the aisle to vote against Scott's amendment, while only three Republicans supported it.
The vote came just a day after President Bush spoke strongly of such provisions as essential to his plan to fund more social services through churches and other religious organizations.
“I want this issue resolved,” Mr. Bush said, in a speech to about 250 religious leaders invited to a White House conference on the faith-based plan. “Congress needs to send me the same language protecting religious hiring [rights] that President Clinton signed on four other occasions. And they need to do it this year. And if we can't get it done this year, I'll consider measures that can be taken through executive action.”
Bush was referring to several other federal social-service programs containing similar religious-hiring provisions that Congress passed and Clinton signed into law between 1996 and 2000. However, Clinton's administration made it their policy not to give grants directly to churches and other pervasively religious providers, thus rendering the hiring provisions moot.
Bush, however, has aggressively pushed a comprehensive plan to fund social services through houses of worship. Although the effort as a whole failed in Congress, Bush has slowly implemented parts of the plan via executive orders and other administrative actions.
Bush's allies in the House have also attempted piecemeal implementation of the plan in various bills, such as the Job Training Improvement Act, authorizing individual grant programs. The House passed a similar version of the bill in 2003, but could not agree with the Senate on it.
The bill is H.R. 27. It now goes to the Senate, where it will likely face stiff opposition.