Protecting Religious Staffing

Executive Order 13297 (Dec. 12, 2002), in addition to promulgating equal treatment principles for social-service procurement using federal funding, amended previous Executive Orders governing contracting for goods and services by the federal government to provide that faith-based organizations are eligible for such contracting without forfeiting their freedom to use religious criteria in their employment policy.

In 2003, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives issued Protecting the Civil Rights and Religious Liberty of Faith-Based Organizations: Why Religious Hiring Rights Must Be Preserved. This booklet (downloadable below) points out that the freedom of faith-based organizations to take account of religion in making employment decisions is protected in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and that only a limited number of federal social-service programs forbid religious staffing by faith-based and other recipients of federal funds. The booklet also notes that Congress, through the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, authorized faith-based organizations that consider such a requirement to be a substantial burden on their religious freedom to ask for an exemption from the requirement.

The Charitable Choice regulations promulgated in 2003 for federal drug treatment funding programs administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) include a specific procedure by which faith-based organizations can seek an exemption from the prohibition of religious staffing in some SAMHSA programs.

For more information about religious staffing, go here.