For religious nonprofits, however, the SBA has waived that rule. As a result, many religious organizations, including thousands of local congregations, received hundreds of millions, and likely billions , of dollars in PPP loans—even though they are affiliated with large organizations that altogether have more than employees. Yet secular nonprofits—such as the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA, and Goodwill—that may have similar affiliation structures are not eligible for this exemption.
In fact, they may be entirely excluded from receiving PPP loans. Many local chapters of national nonprofits may not have applied for federal aid because they feared they were ineligible, while others requested and received aid. Now these large nonprofits are facing legal risks that religious entities are not. The extent of this disparity should become clearer when the SBA discloses more detailed data about PPP loans and their recipients, which it has now promised to do, reversing its earlier refusal to release such information.
But the SBA is now demanding that those Planned Parenthood affiliates return the money they received. It claims that these local centers are ineligible because they are controlled by a national umbrella organization, Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
In a May 21 letter , they called on Attorney General William Barr to open an investigation into Planned Parenthood and suggested that the affiliates should be subjected to civil and criminal penalties for filing fraudulent loan applications.
This back-and-forth between Republican and Democratic senators is only the latest iteration of political conflicts over abortion. There is, however, a more fundamental problem with these recent attacks on Planned Parenthood—a constitutional defect that even critics of the organization should recognize. By privileging religious organizations over secular nonprofits, the SBA and GOP senators are advancing a position that contravenes the establishment clause, which forbids the government from giving special subsidies to religious organizations.
One might have thought that the separation of Church and state would bar churches from receiving PPP loans to fund clergy salaries. But even as the Supreme Court has moved away from a principle of separation, initially by allowing public funding of religious organizations and now more and more toward requiring equal treatment, a policy of favoring religious groups would turn the establishment clause completely on its head. And indeed, one important and longstanding objection to a regime of equal funding is that it leads precisely to this result, namely, preferential treatment for religion.
In the Court considered the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania statute that provided financial support to nonpublic schools for teacher salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials for secular subjects and a Rhode Island statute that provided direct supplemental salary payments to teachers in nonpublic elementary schools. In Lemon v. Kurtzman , the Court established a three-pronged test for laws dealing with religious establishment.
Twenty-six years later the Court modified the Lemon test in Agostini v. In County of Allegheny v. Kennedy in his dissent developed a coercion test : the government does not violate the establishment clause unless it provides direct aid to religion in a way that would tend to establish a state church or involve citizens in religion against their will. In Lynch v. Her fundamental concern was whether government action conveyed a message to non-adherents that they are outsiders. The endorsement test is often invoked in religious display cases.
In McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union , the Court ruled that the display of the Ten Commandments in two Kentucky courtrooms was unconstitutional but refused in the companion case, Van Orden v. Perry , to require the removal of a long-standing monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol. Questions involving appropriate use of government funds are increasingly subject to the neutrality test , which requires the government to treat religious groups the same as it would any other similarly situated group.
In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice William H. From the colonial era to the present, religions and religious beliefs have played a significant role in the political life of the United States.
As religious diversity continues to grow, concerns about separation of church and state are likely to continue. This article was originally published in As has been pointed out, no civil servant is allowed to wear religious symbols.
In other countries, such as Germany, freedom of religion carries some more weight for teachers at state schools. In my opinion, it is important to understand that teachers do not exercise public authority in the actual sense of this term. The fact that teachers at private schools have similar authority shows this in perfect clarity. Still, the relationship between a teacher and a pupil is longer lasting than the relationship between, for example, a police officer and a citizen.
Yet a comment must be made. A teacher wearing a head scarf should forestall the suggestion this is the right thing to do, especially in a situation where a controversy exists in this respect. If it were established that such kinds of problems regularly occur, reconsideration would be necessary. The question whether pupils should be allowed to wear religious symbols is also answered differently in various European countries.
Tolerance reigns in England, although not all religious dress rules are acceptable in the public education sector. French pupils seem to be able to become citizens of the French Republic only insofar as they leave their religion at home. In my opinion, pupils are thus erroneously being considered civil servants.
The French law prohibiting pupils from wearing religious symbols has other rationales as well, for that matter. Research has demonstrated that a lot of girls wear a head scarf under pressure from parents or peer groups. I am not sure, however, that the complicated relationship between free choice, education, and pressure can be solved by the government compelling pupils to be free. Another reason for the French law was that head scarves were considered Islamic propaganda or a symbol of repression of women.
If religion, in general, is seen as a panacea for many or even all social problems, advocacy of a strong bond between state and religion in every domain goes without saying. The contrary holds true if religion is considered harmful. If, however, the main point is freedom of religion, the individual citizen should assess the value of a religion.
These dimensions will be reviewed again briefly. In a pluralistic society, the state should not commit itself to a certain religion or philosophy of life. That would suggest that a supreme being legitimizes government authority.
A neutral exercise of authority regarding religion, in substance and appearance, on the other hand, does not exclude citizens. The counterargument that government, by behaving so, chooses for an atheistic state, is not correct. A state has no conviction and is not comparable to an individual holding a conviction. Conversely, the government has no prominent role to play in the religious domain.
Spiritual welfare is ultimately a personal or institutional affair. That citizens might be offended by the religious doctrines of others is the price to be paid for fundamental freedoms. Only if preaching switches to intimidation or incitement to violence or if religion inspires criminal offenses is government intervention is mandatory.
As a result of government restraint, there may exist a diversity of denominations, neither supported nor evaluated by the government. It would be strange, indeed, if religious and philosophy-of-life diversity were not recognizable, to a certain extent, in political opinion formation. Still, it is desirable that arguments in political discussions are able to appeal to every citizen. Government, however, has no steering role, here, even while supporting political parties financially.
In Europe, it would be different if a party were to attack the premises of a democracy under the rule of law. Backing by the government, on an equal level with public institutions, therefore, is justified. A precondition for receiving support is meeting professional standards. In principle, this holds true for the educational sector as well. Yet, the curriculum has to meet professional standards, not leaving out important scientific doctrines.
Moreover, an added condition would be a certain openness to democracy under the rule of law. On the one hand, a ban on wearing headscarves at a university is not incompatible with the right to freedom of religion in the European Convention Leyla Sahin v.
On the other hand, the same holds true for an obligation to display a crucifix in primary school class rooms ECHR 18 March , Lautsi v. See for a further discussion of this theory of secularization and the shortcomings thereof, W. In the United States, by contrast, Muslims account for only 10 percent of the immigrants, id. Pillarization is the segmentation of society along religious lines; in a pillarized society religiously based organizations play an all-important role in education, media, health care and so on.
In Scotland, the Presbyterian Church is the established church; Wales and Northern Ireland do not have established churches. Theodore S. Sophie C. Labuschagne ed. The preamble of the Irish Constitution has a different approach: the Most Holy Trinity is the source of all authority. Article 6 of the Irish Constitution, however, states that all powers of government derive—under God—from the people.
McCreary County v. Perry, US In the Netherlands, not until , was a Catholic appointed secretary general at a ministry. In Germany, all states have their own rules.
Hessen, for example, has chosen the French system. G ROOT , supra note 26, at — The Act of Settlement requires the head of state to be a protestant clergy.
He engages himself on oath to protect the Church of England and not to marry a Catholic. The clergy of the Church of England recognizes the supreme authority of the sovereign. Katzenstein eds. Religie in dienst van de seculiere staat [ The Turkish paradox. This centralized tax collection might reinforce the church hierarchy.
The church tax amounted to 7. The need to attract a large following could be a factor in explaining the lively church attendance, A. Foreign Aid , 95 G EO. S ACHS , supra note 15, at European Commission of Human Rights , C.
The German Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that the right to freedom of religion as such does not cover a right to financial support. However, if support is given, the principle of equality plays an important part, Bundesverfassungsgericht 12 May , E , This starting point does not exclude completely that government may take measures in certain distressing circumstances, for example, if denominations with a lot of illegal immigrants meet in underground parking garages.
This subsection is in no way meant to be an overview of the discussions about the relationship between religion and public reason. In France, the Catholic daily La Croix has to a large extent profited from regulation concerning state aid to the press. In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled the exclusion of religiously inspired student journals from subsidies for student journals contrary to the First Amendment, Rosenberger v. University of Virginia , US P HIL. Such doubt is not exclusively of a religious nature, however.
The political party concerned was already convicted as a criminal organization guilty of incitement to hate, discrimination, and violence, Hoge Raad [Supreme Court] 30 July , NJ , More generally, state subsidies play a lesser role in the United States, S. In Bowen v.
Kendrick , US , the Supreme Court accepted the backing of a religiously inspired organization giving sex education to youngsters. Lemon v. Kurtzman US ; more recently applied in a. Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, US In view of the Lemon test, it is to be expected that support for certain forms of religiously inspired relief for drug addicts has invited criticism. R EV —6. In Germany, every state has its own system. In Bremen, for example, public schools do not have a Christian character at all.
Ninety percent of the private schools have a Catholic character, J. Meerschaut ed. A coalition of Protestants and liberals strived for public education; see Pybas, supra note 85, at P ERRY , supra note 61, at 4.
Government may not require schools in the public education sector to hang the Ten Commandments on the wall, Stone v. Graham US 39 Alexandre S. See art. Meer in het bijzonder is van belang art.
Freedom of education implies the freedom to set up schools with a religious background, cf. Ambach v. Norwick, U. See Van de La Notte. That does not imply that pupils have to be offered a choice between several religions and philosophies of life; pupils must learn, however, that freedom exists for all kinds of ideas. Constitutional law classes are not mandatory; attention for countries or situations where such freedoms and rights do not exist may be a better option.
Germany, recognizes such a risk as far as home education instead of attending school is concerned. B ADER , supra note 20, at An additional argument might be that teachers wearing a head scarf still could be teaching, namely, in Muslim schools.
C ONST. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Sign In or Create an Account. Sign In. Advanced Search. Search Menu. Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article Navigation. Volume Article Contents Abstract.
Comparative law and a spectrum of models. Religion in the state domain. Government in the religious domain.
State, religion and the forming of political opinion. State, religion, and social services. State, religion, and education. State and religion, a multidimensional relationship: Some comparative law remarks. Nieuwenhuis Aernout J. Email: A. Nieuwenhuis uva. Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Cite Cite Aernout J. Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions.
Abstract Comparative law research regarding the relationship between state and religion often uses models. Chambers, US Trouw 18 July Helms US Leyla Sahin v. All rights reserved.
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