Tucked among the provisions in the budget bill passed by Congress on Friday are new rules about how FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, works with houses of worship. According to the new law, religious nonprofits can’t be excluded from disaster aid just because of their religious nature, which had been the agency’s policy in certain contexts prior to January.
The move resolves a long-standing controversy over the agency’s policy on religious aid, mostly recently raised during Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which damaged a number of houses of worship in the South. It’s also part of a significant trend: Rules on government money going to religious organizations are loosening, a shift that has consequences well beyond disaster aid and emergency management.
Early on, it was clear that they had the White House on their side. “Churches in Texas should be entitled to reimbursement from FEMA Relief Funds for helping victims of Hurricane Harvey (just like others),” President Trump tweeted in September. From a legal perspective, time was arguably on their side as well. The hurricanes hit roughly one month after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, ruling that governments can’t discriminate against religious organizations in awarding grants simply because of their religious nature. The lawsuits relied heavily on that decision, reasoning that the disaster-aid exclusions were analogous to the situation presented in the case.
In January, FEMA took steps to resolve the dispute with new guidelines on eligibility for its public-assistance program, which provides grant money for debris removal, emergency protection, and facility repairs for certain kinds of organizations. In light of Trinity Lutheran, it decided, it would reinterpret the Stafford Act, the law that governs eligibility for disaster aid.
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