American Jewish Committee Dismayed By House Passage of Charitable Choice Bill

American Jewish Committee
Thursday, 19 July 2001

The American Jewish Committee expressed dismay over today's passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of H.R.7, the Community Solutions Act, because it includes unconstitutional and ill-advised "charitable choice" provisions.

The AJC urged the U.S. Senate to stop this harmful "charitable choice" approach to government funding of social services from becoming law.

"While H.R.7 commendably includes new tax incentives for charitable giving, it unfortunately includes, among other things, provisions for government funding of pervasively religious social service providers that unconstitutionally breach the principle of separation of church and state and are just plain bad public policy," said Richard Foltin, legislative director and counsel for the American Jewish Committee.

"H.R.7 simply does not provide adequate safeguards to protect recipients of social services from being coerced to take part in religious activities," said Mr. Foltin. "It is unreasonable to expect, as the bill passed today does, pervasively religious institutions, like churches, synagogues and mosques, to disassociate their crucial religion-teaching mission from the provision of social services for which they receive government funds. And the provisions of this bill endanger, as well, the autonomy of these religious institutions from government intrusion and their invaluable prophetic voice."

"In addition, H.R.7 allows religious organizations to make employment decisions on the basis of religion with respect to persons employed to carry out federally funded social services programs. As a general matter, religious organizations are rightly afforded a limited exemption to prefer members of their own faith because of the powerful religious liberty interests involved," said Mr. Foltin. "But explicit extension of the exemption to cover employees providing publicly funded services, as part of a substantial expansion of the role of pervasively religious organizations in social services provision, runs counter to fundamental civil rights principles. And it is simply unnecessary because social services funded by the government must be secular in nature."

For more information, or to contact American Jewish Committee, see their website at: www.ajc.org