Why the ACLU Is Suing the Government over Grants to Catholic Charities

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has sued the federal government over its contracts with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and other Catholic agencies. The ACLU claims the First Amendment’s establishment clause has been violated because the USCCB groups do not provide contraception and abortion.

According to the lawsuit, the government is required to provide unaccompanied immigrant minors with basic necessities. Because it funds groups that do not offer abortions, however, the ACLU claims the government is not fulfilling its responsibility to female minors.

In fact, the group asserts that the federal government has violated the separation of church and state because its grants to Catholic charities have supposedly authorized them “to impose religiously based restrictions on young women’s access to reproductive health care.”

“Our taxpayer dollars should not be used to authorize organizations to violate the law and impose their religious beliefs on these young women and deny them care they desperately need,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Brigitte Amiri in a press release.

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It’s difficult, however, to take the ACLU’s complaint seriously, especially considering the sizeable number of migrants who have been assisted by the U.S. bishops and other Catholic charities.

According to its 2014 annual report, the USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) resettled almost 21,000 refugees from around the world, accounting for over one-quarter of all refugees resettled in the U.S. during this period. Since 1975, MRS has resettled over 1 million refugees.

Migration and Refugee Services assisted almost 1,300 unaccompanied minors with services such as short- and long-term foster care, shelter, and family reunification. The funding provided to MRS by the federal government allowed the group to provide legal services to another 1,300 unaccompanied minors through partnerships with Catholic Charities and Catholic Legal Immigration Services.

Meanwhile, in 2015, Catholic Charities ranked at No. 15 on the list of the top 50 largest U.S. charities. For immigration and refugee-related charitable work alone — not to mention all of its other charitable work — Catholic Charities in 2014 served almost 395,000 people, 20 percent of whom were minors.

Catholic Charities regularly provides services for immigrants and refugees such as citizenship applications, family visa petitions, legal representation, and counseling, as well as job placement, employment training, and matched savings programs. In addition, 39 agencies of Catholic Charities provide services specifically tailored toward unaccompanied minors.

Of all the migrant workers and undocumented persons assisted by Catholic Charities in 2014, nearly 7,000 became citizens and almost 17,500 achieved the self-sufficiency of stable lodging and employment.

These statistics alone should be enough to prove the value of Catholic organizations to the immigrant community. After all, defenders of Planned Parenthood make a similar argument that the organization should be permitted to receive federal funding despite its providing abortions on the merits of “other services” it provides, such as STD and other health screenings.

Here’s just one example of such an argument, from the Huffington Post:

Apparently, the partisan divide has become so great that moderate Republican women from the Philadelphia suburbs are no longer willing to support a non-profit [Planned Parenthood] that provides vital health services, such as pap smears and screenings for sexual transmitted diseases, to the community.

#related#Impressive as the Catholic charities’ statistics may be, the specifics aren’t what’s most important here. The ACLU wants to cripple these groups’ funding — and thus drastically limit the good they can do — over the issue of abortion alone.

If its lawsuit is successful and the federal government revokes grants to the USCCB, Catholic Charities, and other Catholic groups, the ACLU will have succeeded in depriving immigrants of extensive aid and services and, yes, in denying them “care they desperately need.”