Building on efforts such as the Enzi legislation, a report in the Washington Post last week says that the President’s coming FY 2020 budget will request language to expand its authority to allow discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs.
The Post article states
“In a 2020 draft budget request that has not been made public, the Department of Health and Human Services is seeking broad authority to include faith-based foster-care and adoption groups, which reject LGBTQ parents, non-Christians and others, in the nation’s $7 billion federally funded child-welfare programs. That request follows a waiver granted last month to South Carolina’s Miracle Hill Ministries — which requires foster-care parents to affirm their faith in Jesus Christ and refused to work with a Jewish woman seeking to be a mentor — to continue to receive federal funds.”
The report comes after the President’s comments at last week’s annual National Prayer Breakfast where the President raised the issue in regard to adoptions. The budget request if it is included would suggest that the Administration may feel they lack the kind of authority they would like since they used the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to justify their waiver to South Carolina.
