Blog of Rights
Dena
Sher

Dena is legislative counsel at the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. Sher joined the ACLU in 2011, after four years as the the state legislative counsel with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She worked with legislators, activists, and coalition partners on legislation, policy, and ballot initiatives that affected religious liberties, including school vouchers, healthcare refusals and religion in the workplace. She was also an Equal Justice Works fellow at Americans United. Her Equal Justice Works project investigated how programs funded under President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative were implemented. Sher also worked on many of the cases litigated by AU during her fellowship.

Sher is a graduate of George Washington University Law School and Georgetown University.

 

12/07/2011

Looking for Simple Answers to Basic Questions on Faith-Based Hiring

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Tyler Ray, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:04pm

It’s been almost three years of silence from President Obama on the issue of whether religious organizations may discriminate when hiring for government-funded positions. Let’s take a walk down memory lane to find out where we have been. In 2008, then-candidate Obama promised to restore anti-discrimination protections and end policies put in place by the previous administration that allow the federal government to subsidize employment discrimination on the basis of religion. If only. Instead, his administration decided that hiring discrimination will be reviewed on a “case-by-case” basis.

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12/07/2011
Anti-Muslim Bias

Congress: Stop Targeting American Muslims and Protect Muslim Service Members

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Devon Chaffee, Legislative Policy Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 9:42am

Congress continues to target Muslims even though empirical studies show that violent threats cannot be identified by any religious, ideological, ethnic or racial profile.

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12/01/2011

Who’s Abusing Their Power? House Oversight Committee’s Show-Trial Takes HHS to Task for Helping Trafficking Victims

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Sarah Lipton-Lubet, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 6:28pm

In the upside-down, through-the looking-glass world we often find ourselves in, in our nation’s capital, today the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing “investigating” why Catholic organizations only received $650 million in grants from the Department of Health and Human Services over the last three years, instead of $650 million and change. Never mind that under this administration, as Rep. Gerry Connolly noted, Catholic groups have gotten $100 million more than under Bush. What brought on this investigation? A several million dollar grant to provide services for human trafficking victims that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops bid on, but did not receive. The bishops and their political allies are crying discrimination. As Rep. John Tierney noted this morning, I’m sure a lot of people would like to be discriminated against like that.

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11/18/2011
Using Religion to Discriminate

Helping Trafficking Victims Isn’t Biased

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 9:44pm

Earlier this week, Michael Gerson, an op-ed writer for The Washington Post, penned a particularly troubling piece, accusing the Obama administration—and the ACLU—of anti-Catholic bias, because “the conscience protections of Catholics are under assault.”

The “conscience protections” he mentions are really a license for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, powerful lobbyists whose political agenda differs from lay Catholics sitting in the pews, who contracted with the government to provide services to victims of trafficking, to refuse to provide access to one set of critical services—the full range of reproductive health care, which includes contraception and abortion.

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11/04/2011

Special Exceptions for Religious Organizations Threaten Liberty

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Tyler Ray, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:35am

Last week, at a congressional hearing on “The State of Religious Liberty in the United States,” Rep. Jim Jordan asked a witness what the biggest threat to religious liberty is today. The response from Colby May, from the American Center for Law and Justice, a frequent opponent in our advocacy and litigation: whether or not religious organizations get special exceptions to laws designed to protect those who need government services. We agree with May that this is a critical issue. Needless to say, though, we take different sides.

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09/19/2011

Now Hiring (Some Exclusions May Apply)

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Tyler Ray, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:29am

Right now, the White House is wholly focused on getting people back to work. That should be great news for the American people. Why is it then that the administration has a damaging policy that actually limits certain jobs to only certain people? By allowing religious organizations that receive taxpayer money to hire (or fire) for government-funded positions based on religion, the Obama administration is limiting the job pool for all Americans

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08/10/2011

Since When Is the First Amendment an Afterthought?

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:03pm
"If your focus is first and foremost serving people in need, then there's not a tremendous amount of time left to debate the finer points of the church-state relationship."
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08/03/2011
Employment Discrimination

Obama Says Employment Discrimination "A Very Difficult Issue." It's Not.

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:31am

At his July 22 town hall meeting, President Obama was asked about his 2008 declaration to reform the “faith-based initiative,” clearly stating that faith-based groups that receive taxpayer money to provide social services will no longer be able to discriminate in hiring with taxpayer dollars.

Despite this promise, his administration has taken no action to reverse Bush-era policies still in place that permit this exact type of hiring discrimination. The administration’s initial and oft-repeated talking point is that the Justice Department is reviewing the issue on a case-by-case basis. President Obama’s response at the town hall meeting was less evasive, but it completely missed the mark.

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07/18/2011
Religious Discrimination

Obama Administration Can't Make the Case for Religious Discrimination

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office & Elayne Weiss, Washington Legislative Office at 4:38pm

What a disappointing, and frankly lame, response. Last month, the ACLU, along with more than 50 organizations, sent a letter to President Obama urging him to end taxpayer-funded hiring discrimination based on religion in government contracts. President George W. Bush had rolled back this civil rights protection, which was first established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1941. President Obama promised to change this policy, but so far nothing. Thus, the coalition wrote to the president to again ask him to restore the civil rights protection.

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06/23/2011
Hiring Discrimination

President Obama: Restore Civil Rights Protections!

By Dena Sher, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:03pm

Seventy years ago this week, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered all federal agencies to "include in all defense contracts hereafter negotiated by them a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate against any worker because of race, creed, color, or national origin." This was the first action taken by the government to promote equal opportunity in the workplace for all Americans, and such fair employment protections were later expanded to include all government contracts and have been strengthened by nearly every president since.

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