GOPers See Big Win for Religious Freedom If House Keeps ‘Charitable Choice’ in Fed Grants

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) at the U.S. Capitol on June 29, 2021. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

First Amendment religious freedom advocates cheered on June 21 when the Supreme Court struck down a Maine law denying faith-based school funding options to parents who see public education as failing their children. Another such big win could come on June 22 in the House of Representatives.

The occasion is the House taking up H.R. 7666, the Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act of 2022, legislation that enjoys bipartisan support, having been introduced by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and the committee’s ranking Republican member, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.).

Unlike most legislation, however, House Republicans see the expected victory for religious freedom and school choice in what H.R. 7666 doesn’t do.

“By making sure charitable choice wasn’t stripped in this bill, we’re leading to ensure the federal government does not discriminate against faith-based and religious organizations,” Rodgers told the Epoch Times. “Faith-based non-profits and organizations deserve every chance to make a difference in our communities and to compete on equal footing for funding. They should never be pressured or forced to compromise their religious missionism.”

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), a member of the energy and commerce panel, told The Epoch Times that “the Restoring Hope for Mental Health and Well-Being Act would ensure that religious organizations, including pro-life groups, can compete for funds on equal footing with other organizations and at the same time preserve their religious mission.”

“Without a charitable choice provision, the Biden administration could pick and choose who gets funds and who doesn’t—and freeze out anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep with their agenda,” Johnson said. “Getting this provision included is a victory against the radical left’s continual war on religious organizations and religious freedom.”

Three major block grant programs are covered by H.R. 7666, including the Community Mental Health Services Block Grant, the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, and the Pediatric Mental Health Care Access Grant. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the legislation would spend more than $1.6 billion over a 10-year period.

Charitable choice first became law when President Bill Clinton signed bipartisan block-grant legislation containing the provision in 1998, with strong support from both parties in Congress. The protection’s coverage was subsequently extended throughout the federal social welfare program ranks.

But in more recent years, increasingly influential far-left activists in the Democratic Party have routinely pushed Congress to ban faith-based groups from competing on an equal basis with secular nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations in providing services for social welfare programs funded by block grants.

The Coalition Against Religious Discrimination (CARD) describes itself as “a broad and diverse group of leading religious, civil rights, labor, health, secular, and women’s organizations that formed in the 1990s to monitor legislative and regulatory changes impacting government partnerships with religious and other nonprofit social service providers, and, in particular, to oppose government-funded religious discrimination,” according to an April 30, 2021, letter signed by representatives of dozens of far-left activist groups.

But the group’s concern about religious discrimination doesn’t extend to faith-based groups that have participated in federal block-grant-funded social service programs for decades.

“Faith-based organizations, like secular organizations, however, should not be allowed to take government funds and then place religious litmus tests on whom they hire, whom they serve, or what services required under the program to provide,” CARD told Melissa Rogers, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Earlier this year, Democrats succeeded in removing charitable choice protection from H.R. 5129, the Community Services Block Grant Modernization Act of 2022,(CSBG) which funds and governs the administration of anti-poverty programs that originated with the “War on Poverty” in the 1960s. The Senate has yet to take up the CSBG proposal.

Gone were the comprehensive regulatory protections for faith-based groups against bureaucratic and political interference that had developed in the decades since the Clinton era, and in its place was a simple sentence:

“Neither the federal government nor a state or local government shall require a religious organization to alter its form of internal governance except (for purposes of administration of the community services block grant program) as provided in section 680(c).”

But Republican aides who spoke on background to The Epoch Times said there was a much better outcome when the committee moved H.R. 7666.

“We kept the Democrats from inserting language that would strip charitable choice from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA] grant programs where faith-based organizations have historically been eligible. They’ve tried to change the status quo like this before in other bills,” one of the Republican aides told The Epoch Times, referring to CSBG.

“We’re maintaining charitable choice, so it remains unlawful to discriminate against faith-based groups in the case of these SAMHSA grants. It’s a victory to keep the Biden administration from expanding its war against the missions of religious organizations.”