The government funds faith-based and secular organizations to provide important social services, including foster care, homeless shelters, food banks, drug-and-alcohol counseling, and long-term care facilities. Some of these organizations receive millions of taxpayer dollars each year.
No one in need of help should be turned away from taxpayer-funded programs because they can’t meet a religious test. Nor should they be forced to pray or participate in religious activities in order to get vital services. But religious extremists want the government to fund religious providers while insisting they can remove church-state safeguards and nondiscrimination protections for people who use the programs.
The Trump administration stripped critical religious-freedom protections from people who use taxpayer-funded social services. AU is urging the Biden administration to restore those protections, including notifying individuals of their rights not to be discriminated against based on religion, proselytized to or required to participate in religious activities, and the right to an alternative service provider.
Americans United chairs the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination (CARD), which is the national coalition of dozens of organizations fighting policies that allow religiously affiliated social service organizations to use taxpayer funds to discriminate.
In November 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rescinded exemptions granted by the Trump administration that allowed child welfare providers to use religion to discriminate against potential foster parents. AU and its allies are working to fix federal policies that still allow the use of religion to discriminate, including with respect to foster care.
The Do No Harm Act will help ensure that our laws are a shield to protect religious freedom and not used as a sword to harm others by undermining civil rights laws and denying access to health care.
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