Radio Recap: Trump Admin Stops Government Discrimination of Religion

The Trump Administration is taking decisive action to stop government discrimination against churches and religious organizations.

At the ACLJ we’ve been working on this issue for a long time. Today on the show we discussed the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) newly proposed pro-religious liberty rule that would protect churches and religious charities in their hiring practices.

Yesterday, we filed legal comments in support of this rule.

Churches and religious charities are coming under increasing pressure to disregard their faith, as the Left attempts to bury the sacred in red tape. They are hampered in their ability to do the work their faith dictates. A lot of that is also aid work and humanitarian work.

Oftentimes you’ll see a church or a school engage in community service, disaster relief, and other charity work. Very often if you do that kind of work then you are eligible to receive federal contracts and grants.

The Constitution and federal law has been clear on this. It protects religious institutions. There has been a lot of confusion on this because faith-based institutions often feel like they have to make a false choice between who they hire or getting the much needed funding.

What this new rule does is remove the ambiguity.

As I mentioned we at the ACLJ filed our own comments in support of this rule with the Department of Labor yesterday. The way this works is these rules are proposed. Then there’s a public comment period, and then they are finalized.

The public comment period how now ended. Over the course of just one week, 72,000 of you signed on to our comments in support of the proposed rule.

We also encouraged our members to file their own comments directly with the DOL and 4,200 of you did just that. In fact, ACLJ member comments account for over 13% of the total comments received by the Department of Labor on this proposed rule to protect churches and other religious organizations from discrimination. That is awesome.

In our comments we detailed four reasons why this was so necessary.

First, it would address an ambiguity in the law. 

Second, religious organizations provide an essential and quantifiable positive net to society as a whole by promoting charity, civic virtues, and good citizenship.

Third, these rights are already enshrined in the constitution. Lastly, the proposed guidelines do not create new protections but rather use the tried and true legal framework of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Imagine if you made the choice to send your kids to a Christian school and the government forced it to hire a self-proclaimed atheist for a teaching position. No church or religious organization should be forced to hire anyone who disagrees with the tenets of their faith. That’s the bottom line.

We at the ACLJ will continue to fight for religious freedom for individuals, churches, and religious organizations.

You can listen to the entire episode here.