Caesar's Coin: Federal Funds, Civil Rights, and Churches

Today, freedom and equality often seem in conflict. This conflict is all the more troubling when equality and religious freedom collide, given their mutual and long-standing support. That dilemma is plainly raised by the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988 which Congress passed the to overturn Grove City College v. Bell. In adopting the Act, Congress defined program broadly, and placed most fund recipients in their entirety within the commands of Title IX and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975 which prohibit age and disability discrimination respectively, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination by reason of race, color, or national origin. Congress passed the Act to promote equality, but at the expense of religious freedom, since, aware that the Act would apply also to churches, Congress refused, nonetheless, to exclude them from its recipient-wide coverage. This article explores whether the balance struck is constitutional.