Faith-based hiring called no bar to aid

Administration says in memo it can bypass laws

WASHINGTON - In a newly disclosed legal memorandum, the Bush administration says it can bypass laws that forbid giving taxpayer money to religious groups that only hire staff members who share their faith.

The administration, which has sought to lower barriers between church and state through its religion-based initiative offices, made the claim in a 2007 Justice memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel. It was quietly posted on the department's website this week.

The statutes for some grant programs do not impose antidiscrimination conditions on their financing, and the administration had previously allowed such programs to give taxpayer money to groups that only hire people of a particular religion.

But the memorandum goes further, drawing a sweeping conclusion that even federal programs subject to antidiscrimination laws can give money to groups that discriminate.

The document signed off on a $1.5 million grant to World Vision, a group that hires only Christians, for salaries of staff members running a program that helps "at-risk youth" avoid gangs. The grant was from a Justice Department program created by a statute that forbids discriminatory hiring for the positions it is financing.

But the memo said the government could bypass those provisions because of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It sometimes permits exceptions to a federal law if obeying it would impose a "substantial burden" on people's ability to freely exercise their religion. The opinion concluded that requiring World Vision to hire non-Christians as a condition of the grant would create such a burden.

But several law professors who specialize in religious issues criticized the administration's argument as legally dubious. Ira C. Lupu, the codirector of the Project on Law and Religious Institutions at George Washington University Law School, said the memorandum's reasoning is "a very big stretch."