State Rep. Eric Turner Thinks Some State Contractors Should Be Allowed To Discriminate Against Employees Based On Religion

State Rep. Eric Turner (R-Cicero) believes that some state contractors should be permitted to discriminate in their hiring decisions and other conditions of employment under an amendment he successfully offered in the House Ways & Means Committee to SB 367, a bill pertaining to property taxation. The Star's Tony Cook provides the following information on today's action:

Some state contractors would be allowed to discriminate against employees based on religion under a provision state lawmakers slipped into an unrelated bill during a House committee meeting today.

The change to Senate Bill 367, a property tax bill, would allow any school, college, or religious institution affiliated with a church to hire employees based on religion, even if they have a contract with the state.

House Ways and Means Committee barely approved the change on a 9-8 vote. The amended version of the bill was then forwarded to the full House on a 12-7 vote.

The contractors exempted from the non-discrimination requirement includes any school, educational or charitable religious institution owned or conducted by or affiliated with a church or religious institution. This goes back to the fundamental question of the constitutionality of public funding of churches and religious institutions. Both the Establishment Clause contained within the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Indiana Constitution's Bill of Rights impose restrictions on the use of public funds for religious purposes. The only way around the prohibition is if the funds being provided to churches and religious-affiliated organizations are being used in a manner that does not promote any religious or sectarian purposes. Turner wants to let churches and religious organizations have their cake and eat it too. That's got legal challenge written all over it. If you don't want any strings attached, then don't take the money. That's the price you pay for accepting public funding.

UPDATE: That didn't take long. House Speaker Brian Bosma is sending SB 367 back to committee to remove Turner's amendment.

“There was a lot of confusion about the purpose and intent of the amendment, so I thought it best for it to come out so it wasn’t a distraction,” he said.

Bosma said the measure was intended to address a state contracting issue with Indiana Wesleyan University, but that some people felt it went beyond that purpose.

Madrassas In UK Not A Model For Our Schools

A speech U.S. Rep. Andre Carson recently gave in which he says that madrassa schools, Islamic parochial schools, should be a model for how children in this country are taught sparked controversy and has made news across the country and even in Great Britain. An undercover investigative report of madrassas in the United Kingdom, where such schools have received the stamp of approval and funding from the government, found that students were regularly being beaten by their teachers, and students were taught intolerance towards all things non-Islamic. Rep. Carson insists that his comments have been taken out of context, and that he is not arguing that the teachings of the Koran should be taught in publicly-financed schools. While the video above focuses on madrassas in the U.K., there have been concerns raised that a number of charter schools operating in the U.S. with public funding are essentially madrassas where Islam is being taught in the classroom with public funding. The ACLU in Minnesota, for example, sued a now-defunct charter school that it claimed blurred the lines between education and religious instruction in violation of the Establishment Clause. In Indiana, State Superintendent Tony Bennett has approved participation by Islamic schools in the state's Choice Scholarship program, which provides vouchers to parents to offset tuition costs of sending their children to private schools. The Islamic School of Indianapolis is one such school that is now being funded with public tax dollars. All private schools approved for participation in the program are religious schools. Marion Co. Superior Court Judge Michael Keele ruled against plaintiffs who brought a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state's school voucher law because it provides indirect public funding of religious schools. Judge Keele found the law constitutional because the vouchers are given to the parents, who then have the choice of spending the money at the school of their choice, which means the religious school of your choice. The decision has been appealed to the state's Supreme Court. The Indiana Constitution (Article 1, Section 6) specifically prohibits the use of public funds for a religious institution. It reads: "No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution."