Author: Pam Belluck
Publication: The New York Times
Date: July 27, 2001
State officials in Missouri were
distressed earlier this year when they received a complaint that a religious
boarding school in the rural town of Bethel was punishing students by forcing
them to muck out deep pits of manure.
The state was unaware that such
a practice was going on.
But there was no reason it should
have known. In Missouri, residential schools and homes for troubled youths
are exempt from virtually all state regulation if they are run by religious
organizations.
"They have no obligation to even
make themselves known to us," said Denise Cross, director of the Missouri
Division of Family Services. "There is no regulatory body for those facilities."
When it comes to exempting religious
institutions from state laws and regulations, Missouri is not alone. Some
states grant exemptions to religious academies or boarding homes; others
allow day care centers run by religious groups to operate without licenses.
Increasingly, legal experts say,
religious organizations have been seeking and winning exemptions from other
areas of the law, from land-use regulations to health requirements, like
immunization.
In the last few years, more than
a dozen states have passed or considered legislation to prohibit state
and local laws from interfering with religious practices or beliefs unless
the state or city can show that a compelling public interest is at stake.
A similar federal law, the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act, was enacted in 1993 and was struck down by the
Supreme Court in 1997. As a result, nine states, including Connecticut,
Florida, Illinois, Rhode Island and Texas, have enacted so- called religious
protection measures. And supreme courts in six other states, including
Massachusetts and Minnesota, have issued rulings that have the same effect.
Last year Congress passed a measure
allowing religious institutions to be exempt from land-use rules that impose
"a substantial burden on religious exercise." Under the law, a house of
worship seeking to, say, build a sanctuary violating height or historic
preservation ordinances might be able to exempt itself.
"We're in an era when government
is extraordinarily deferential to religious organizations," said Marci
A. Hamilton, a professor of constitutional law at Yeshiva University's
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, who challenged the federal religious
protection act before the Supreme Court. "Legislators think that in this
era there's a lot of political benefit in doing good things for religion,
and saying no to religious requests is hard for them to do."
David Gibbs III, general counsel
for the Christian Law Association, which advises legislators and groups
on gaining religious liberties, said that "there is a push to get religious
freedom restoration acts imposed on a state level" and that his group and
others had been trying to make state and local governments aware of the
federal land-use law.
"People ask why should there be
a religious exemption," Mr. Gibbs said. "No. 1 is the First Amendment,
which guarantees that government would not excessively entangle itself
with religion. No. 2, lots of the traditional government regulations will
conflict with the purpose of a religious organization," including, he said,
the ability to hire only people of a certain faith, to proselytize and
to incorporate the Bible throughout the programs.
Mr. Gibbs and others said they expected
that efforts by religious organizations to expand legal exemptions would
intensify in light of President Bush's proposal to increase federal financing
for charitable works of religious organizations.
That proposal, passed by the House
of Representatives, would allow religions that receive federal money for
charitable work to continue hiring solely within their faith. Under current
law, religions are allowed to impose such a hiring restriction, using private
money, to maintain the character of their faith. Civil rights groups argue
that the president's proposal would amount to federally financed discrimination
in hiring.
The debate over exemptions can be
passionate, particularly when it concerns children. Religious sites run
by evangelical Christian groups, for example, may resist licensing so they
can use corporal punishment or hire employees whose experience caring for
children comes primarily from being parents, not from training or education
that the state might require. Most children are put in these places by
their parents; advocates of licensing say state regulation is needed to
keep children safe.
"It's a little war that's going
on," Ms. Hamilton said, "a heated battle between children's advocates and
religious representatives."
But in the roughly 15 states that
have religious exemptions for day care centers or residential academies,
the exemptions are often fashioned in a more shaded manner. Religious groups
agree to follow basic health and safety requirements in exchange for being
allowed to teach, discipline and hire as they please.
In Florida, church day care centers
and residential homes for troubled youths used to be licensed by the state,
but now they are allowed to be accredited by an association of their peers
instead, provided they get no government financing.
Ed MacClellan, director of the Florida
Association of Christian Child Caring Agencies, which accredits residential
homes for youths, said the association's standards exempted homes from
state rules on hiring and religious teaching.
"Initially we started the group
when it was a period where the state was using the licensing to effect
a religious agenda," Mr. MacClellan said. "They wanted you to take down
the crosses and the pictures of Jesus, but we didn't want them to go. And
there were some concerns about not wanting to give a lick or a spank to
a kid. But if a program is biblically based then in our state they can
still give a spanking."
In South Carolina, religious day
care centers must either be state licensed or registered. If registered,
they are exempt from regulations on personnel and curriculum.
That allows Grace Day Care in West
Columbia to "teach them to be born again, the Ten Commandments, things
like that," said the center's director, Carolyn Moss. Children at Grace
may also be disciplined with "one or two swats" with a wooden ruler or
paddle, if other disciplinary methods have failed, Mrs. Moss said.
Some states allow religious day
care centers to be exempt from licensing if they operate part-time, less
than two days a week in New Mexico, for example, or less than 24 hours
a week in Louisiana.
Illinois exempts religious day care
centers if they are part of a nonprofit religious elementary school, receive
no government money, meet health and fire standards and care for children
age 3 or older.
More wholesale exemptions tend to
be approved in states with large numbers of conservative Christians.
In Mississippi last year, a bill
to require residential youth homes to be licensed stalled until legislators
agreed to exempt religious institutions from the law.
In South Carolina, a few years ago,
a similar exemption passed.
"People were very concerned," said
Becky Sharp, director of planning and development for the South Carolina
Department of Social Services. "But we have a large Christian Coalition
base in the state."
In Missouri, legislation has been
introduced in recent years to eliminate religious exemptions. But in a
state with many evangelical Christians, the bills have not gotten far.
The only ones to pass have been modest, requiring religious day care centers
to comply with basic health and safety regulations and compelling agencies
that care for children to register employees with the state.
Richard C. Dunn, former executive
director of Boys and Girls Town of Missouri, who a few years ago testified
on behalf of a bill to prohibit exemptions, said religious advocates "filled
the halls up, talking about paddling and all the rest of it."
"The question was raised about one
of the places that testified against us, `Do you have an operation manual?'
" Mr. Dunn said. "The guy said, `Yes, here it is,' and pulled out a copy
of the King James Bible."
Some religious facilities say increased
regulation would put them out of business because they could not afford
to meet licensing standards. Jay Craig, business manager at Shiloh Christian
Children's Ranch in northeast Missouri, said that in other states "regulations
have strangled homes or have come close to it."
For example, Mr. Craig said, "if
we had to be licensed by the state, for children to swim in any type of
pool there would have be a water-safety trained person there. Perhaps it's
more safe and secure with the regulations, but sometimes regulations get
on top of each other to where you have the law of diminishing results."
Critics of exemptions say the lack
of regulations encourages unlicensed facilities to spring up. They cite
the case of Mountain Park Baptist Boarding Academy, which left Mississippi
after tangling with juvenile- court officials and came to Missouri in 1987.
It was not until 1998, however, when a 16-year-old was killed by fellow
students, that Missouri officials became aware of the school.
"Anybody in Missouri can come in
and decide you're a church and open a home for children," said Joe Ketterlin,
executive director of the Missouri Coalition of Children's Agencies, whose
members are licensed. "Nobody knows who they are or where they are until
some fiasco happens."
While critics of exemptions say
that many religious homes are well- intentioned, they also question the
safety of their practices. They object to homes like Heartland, which wean
students from prescribed psychiatric medication. They also contend that
punishments - working in manure pits at Heartland, forced walking at Shiloh
- are too harsh. At Heartland, five employees have been charged with child
abuse.
"I think often they are uninformed,
not making good decisions, clear decisions about discipline, not schooled
in psychology or therapeutic issues," said Ruth Ehresman, policy director
for Citizens for Missouri's Children, a public interest group. "They have
sort of a simplistic approach that once the young person gives his or her
life to Jesus, that's the turning point."
Karen Culler, executive director
of Show Me Christian Children's Homes, sees things differently. She says
that religious schools support children in ways the state cannot.
"The children know people are helping
them who want to and don't have to," Ms. Culler said. "I think they appreciate
it more."
