Tag: Trump attack on the separation of church and state

Jewish group fears Trump’s new push threatens the separation of church and state

AlterNet logoThe head of a Jewish Democratic group condemned President Trump’s recently announced policies on religion as “a concerted attempt to chip away at the critically important separation of church and state.”

“The ‘religious freedom’ regulations announced by the White House regarding prayer in school and at nine federal agencies represent a concerted attempt to chip away at the critically important separation of church and state,” Jewish Democratic Council of America executive director Halie Soifer told Salon by email. “It’s also a transparent attempt by the President to pander to his Evangelical base. President Trump is using the pretext of ‘religious freedom’ to fulfill his broader political agenda as opposed to prioritizing the actual freedom of Americans, as protected by the First Amendment.”

On Thursday the Trump administration announced a number of measures that further the agenda of Christian conservatives. Nine federal agencies — including the Department of Justice, the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services — will remove restrictions on religious social service providers that use federal tax money requiring them to inform beneficiaries of secular organizations that could provide the same services. The Education Department will compel states to inform the federal government if there are complaints regarding students’ rights to pray, even though this requirement does not apply to other discrimination accusations. The department will also submit a guidance letter to the states requiring local districts to certify that they have no rules or regulations conflicting with students’ right to pray. In addition, according to BuzzFeed, the Department of Education will issue a draft regulation requiring all public colleges and universities that receive federal funding to provide the same rights, privileges and money to religious students groups that secular student groups have. Continue reading.

Civil rights groups sue Trump administration over religious conscience rule

A new rule allows providers to deny care to people whose medical needs raise an objection of religion or conscious.

President Donald Trump’s administration faces a lawsuit over a new rule allowing health care providers to deny care to women, the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups whose medical needs raise an objection of religion or conscious.

Lambda Legal, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Association of LGBTQ+ Psychiatrists are among the coalition of civil rights groups who are suing Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services over its new rule. In their complaint filed Tuesday, the coalition argued the new Health and Human Services rule violates the basic freedoms of individuals who could face discrimination from religious conservatives.

“Although purporting to implement long-standing healthcare statutes with specific provisions affording protections for the religious or moral beliefs of certain individuals and entities (‘religious objections’), the rule instead creates a wholly new regime that elevates religious objections over all other interests and values,” the complaint says. “The rule invites a much larger universe of healthcare workers to decline to serve patients based on religious objections, defines with unprecedented breadth the types of activities to which they may object and fails to reconcile objections with the needs and rights of patients — even though doing so is critical in any regulatory scheme administering these laws. And the rule does not include emergency exceptions.”

View the complete May 29 article by Matthew Rozsa from Salon on the AlterNet website here.