The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a hearing on June 1, 2007, entitled "The Blaine Amendments and Anti-Catholicism." The ACLU sent a letter to the Commission arguing that although opponents of the so-called "Blaine amendments" (state laws prohibiting government funding of religious education) misleadingly raise the specter of anti-Catholic bias as a reason for repeal, opponents are not able to cite any examples during the last one hundred years where laws have in fact relied on Blaine amendments to justify anti-Catholic bias. Thus "anti-Catholic bias" is a pretext to disguise the real reason opponents want to repeal the Blaine amendments. They want to use taxpayer dollars to pay for religious activities. The Commission's statutory mandate is to focus on discrimination, not to seek pretexts to promote taxpayer funding of religious education.