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Taxpayer-Financed Bigotry
New Rules Should Ban Discrimination by Federal
Contractors
JULY 11, 2014
President Obama should resist
a pressure campaign by some religious groups to weaken a promised executive
order that would prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against gay
men, lesbians and transgender people in their hiring practices.
Emboldened by the Supreme
Court’s addlebrained Hobby Lobby decision, several groups wrote [see below] to Mr. Obama on July 1 asking him to allow federal
contractors to fire or refuse to hire workers based on their religious
objections to a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
This is not a question of
religious freedom. It is a question of whether to allow religion to be used as
an excuse to discriminate in employment against a particular group of people.
Many states already have laws protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
workers. There is no such federal law, so the presidential order (promised but
not yet produced) would extend those rules to companies that receive federal
contracts in states without those kinds of anti-bias laws, protecting millions
more people.
Mr. Obama’s resolve is being
tested. There is no good reason to give religious employers a special privilege
to inflict undeserved pain by, for example, refusing to hire someone to work on
a government-backed project just because she happens to be a lesbian, or firing
a capable employee who marries someone of the same sex.
The July 1 letter came one day after the Supreme Court decided that
religious owners of secular, for-profit companies can refuse to comply with a
regulation requiring that women be provided contraception coverage in their
employer-based health insurance. The order created the danger that intolerant
people would feel emboldened to try to justify denying fair treatment in other
ways.
The July 1 letter did just
that, arguing that underwriting bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender people with the public’s money is the best way “to respect
diversity of opinion on this issue in a way that respects the dignity of all
parties to the best of our ability.” The letter, which followed a similar
missive from 150 conservative religious groups, was organized by Michael Wear,
an evangelical Christian who worked on the White House faith-based initiative
during Mr. Obama’s first term and calls himself a supporter of both the
president and gay rights.
The Hobby Lobby ruling does
not compel a retreat from the coming order’s goal of fairness for all. Indeed,
the flawed majority opinion interpreting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
in the Hobby Lobby case contained assurances that it does not threaten
anti-discrimination rules in other spheres. The Civil Rights Act gives
religious groups some leeway to favor members of their own faith in hiring. In
2002, President George W. Bush extended that leeway to faith-based service
organizations receiving federal money, and Mr. Obama has failed to keep a
campaign promise to rescind Mr. Bush’s order.
But longstanding rules forbid
discrimination by government contractors based on race, sex or national origin,
even on religious grounds. That should apply to sexual orientation and gender
identity as well.
^^^
Faith Groups Seek Exclusion From Bias Rule
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD
DAVIS and ERIK ECKHOLM
JULY 8, 2014
WASHINGTON — After a setback in the Supreme Court in the Hobby
Lobby case, President Obama is facing mounting pressure from religious groups
demanding to be excluded from his long-promised executive order that would bar
discrimination against gay men and lesbians by companies that do government
work.
The president has yet to sign
the executive order, but last week a group of major faith organizations,
including some of Mr. Obama’s allies, said he should consider adding an
exemption for groups whose religious beliefs oppose homosexuality. In Burwell
v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the court ruledthat family-run corporations with
religious objections could be exempted from providing employees with insurance
coverage for contraception.
The demands of the faith
organizations pose a dilemma for Mr. Obama, who has struggled to preserve
freedom of expression among religious groups while supporting the rights of gay
men and lesbians. Mr. Obama could unleash a conservative uproar if he is seen
as intruding on religious beliefs, but many of his strongest supporters would
be bitterly disappointed if he appeared to grant any leeway to anti-gay
discrimination.
The White House has given no
reason for the executive order’s delay.
In a July 1 letter to Mr.
Obama sent the day after the Hobby Lobby case was decided, leaders of religious
groups wrote that “we are asking that an extension of protection for one group
not come at the expense of faith communities whose religious identity and beliefs
motivate them to serve those in need.”
The effort behind the letter
was organized by Michael Wear, who worked in the White House faith-based
initiative during Mr. Obama’s first term and directed the president’s faith
outreach in the 2012 campaign. The letter, which called for a “robust religious
exemption” in the planned executive order, was also signed by the Rev. Larry
Snyder, the chief executive ofCatholic Charities U.S.A.; Rick Warren, the pastor
of Saddleback Church, who delivered the invocation at Mr. Obama’s first
inauguration; and Stephan Bauman, president of World Relief, an aid
group affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals.
Mr. Wear, who calls himself
an “ardent supporter” of the president and a backer of gay rights, said in an
interview on Tuesday that the rationale of the organizations was to maintain
the rights they have. “We’re not trying to support crazy claims of religious
privilege,” he said.
He described the letter as a
request from “friends of the administration” to ensure that the executive order
provides “robust” protection of religious service organizations that uphold
religious-based moral standards for their staff members, whether Catholic,
Jewish or Muslim.
To give an example, faith
leaders said a Catholic charity group that believes sex outside heterosexual
marriage is a sin should not be denied government funding because it refused to
employ a leader who was openly gay. Gay-rights groups countered that it would
be unacceptable to allow religious organizations receiving taxpayer money to
refuse to hire employees simply because they were gay, and said they did not
expect the White House to provide such an exclusion. On Tuesday they stepped up
their calls for Mr. Obama to quickly complete and sign the order.
“Activists have every expectation that this
executive order will be issued without any further religious exemption,” Fred
Sainz, vice president for communications and marketing at the Human Rights Campaign,
said in an interview.
The July 1 letter followed
one on June 25 that was signed by more than 150 conservative religious groups
and leaders, including many major evangelical associations. That letter warned
the president that “any executive order that does not fully protect religious
freedom will face widespread opposition and will further fragment our nation.”
The groups said many
organizations doing vital work for the federal government in overseas relief,
prisons and technical aid maintained religious-based “employee moral conduct
standards” that could be affected by the order.
Last month, Mr. Obama
promised he would soon sign the executive order, which would bar federal
contractors from job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender
identity. He said he was acting on his own because a drive in Congress for a
national anti-bias law to cover nearly all employers, the Employment
Nondiscrimination Act, had stalled.
Many states already have
nondiscrimination laws protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
workers, but the presidential order would extend anti-bias rules to companies
and service agencies that receive federal contracts in the 29 states that do
not have such laws. The order would protect an additional 14 million workers,
according to an analysis by the Williams Institute at the School
of Law of the University
of California, Los Angeles. It would apply to companies that
do business with the federal government, including large American employers
like Exxon Mobil and Dell, as well as religious universities and charities with
federal contracts.
Federal employees already
have the protections under an executive order issued in 1998 by President Bill
Clinton.
Gay-rights advocates argue
that religious groups already enjoy a broad exemption under a 2002 executive
order signed by President George W. Bush that allows faith-based organizations
to consider religion in hiring decisions without jeopardizing federal grants or
contracts.
“There’s no reason to add
additional language to further allow discrimination,” said Winnie Stachelberg
of the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group.
In the continuing battle for
opinion, on Tuesday 100 liberal faith leaders released a letter to the
president urging him to issue the anti-bias order without any new religious
exemption.
Also on Tuesday, a group of
gay-rights and civil-rights groups withdrew their support for the Employment
Nondiscrimination Act, which includes a religious exemption. The groups, which
had never liked the religious provision in the proposed legislation but
accepted it as a way to attract Republican support, said the Hobby Lobby
decision had “made it all the more important that we not accept this
inappropriate provision.”
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