American Civil Liberties Union

As you evaluate and formulate policies on the role that community-based and faith-based organizations should play in providing government-funded social services, we write to urge you to restore religious liberty and civil rights protections into these partnerships. We believe that the policies pursued under the title “Faith-Based Initiative” in recent years lack the proper accountability and constitutional safeguards necessary to preserve the independence of religious organizations and protect the civil rights and religious liberty of the employees and beneficiaries of government-funded programs.