What does the federal bureaucracy have against religious liberty?
An article in the Wall Street Journal by Nicole Stelle Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor, and Meredith Holland Kessler, an attorney with the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic, lists a series of proposed regulations at various stages of approval that would seriously curtail religious freedom.
The article, behind a paywall, is entitled Biden Boils the Religious-Liberty Frog, with the deck, “A series of innocuous-sounding regulations conceal an affront to the American faithful.” Here are the proposed new rules, with links to their documentation:
(1) “Partnerships With Faith-Based and Neighborhood Organizations.” From the departments of Education, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and the Agency for International Development.
The new regulations for these nine agencies, according to the article, “would scale back and in some instances rescind rules ensuring that religious organizations may participate in federally funded programs while keeping their faith commitments. The proposal would also constrain participating organizations’ right to hire employees who embrace and advance their religious mission.”
(2) Rescinding the Religious Liberty and Free Inquiry rule. From the Department of Education.
You may recall how a few years ago university administrations were harassing student religious organizations, including shutting them down unless they allowed non-believers to hold office. The Trump administration put a stop to that with this rule, which would deny federal funding to universities that deny benefits to religious groups that are available to non-religious groups. Rescinding that rule would restore the earlier harassment. See this discussion.
(3) Revising Title IX to define disapproval of homosexuality and transgenderism as sex discrimination. From the Department of Education.
Says the article, “Much of the attention on these proposed changes has focused on university procedures for sexual-assault cases and on a separate regulatory proposal governing transgender athletes. But the proposed rules also extend the definition of ‘sex discrimination’ to include speech and conduct that subjectively—not objectively, as is currently required—could be interpreted as discriminating on the basis of sex, which it would redefine to include sexual orientation and identity. . . .A student or faculty member could be expelled or fired simply for espousing traditional beliefs about sex and marriage if a disciplinary body finds it is more likely than not that some will find these views subjectively objectionable.”
(4) Rescinding “Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of Authority” from Health and Human Services Department; and Rescinding the Moral Exemption Rule. from the Internal Revenue Service, the Employee Benefits Security Administration, and the Health and Human Services Department.
Both of these proposals would scale back conscience protections, requiring religious hospitals and doctors to perform abortions, gender transition surgeries, and other procedures for which they have moral or religious objections.
“Many of these regulations will be challenged in court, and some of them eventually will be invalidated,” comments the Notre Dame legal experts. “But religious believers shouldn’t have to turn to courts to remind the executive branch that it is bound by the Constitution.”
Illustration: The Struggle of the Slav by John S. Pughe (1870-1909). Original from Library of Congress via Rawpixel, Public Domain, CC0
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In