A Wisconsin-based group sues the federal government over the faith-based initiative The president creates three new Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives by Executive Order and more agency regulations are announced Congress works to include religion in legislation A Wisconsin-based Group Sues the Federal Government Over the Faith-Based Initiative On June 17, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) filed suit against the federal government in the U.S. District Court Western District of Wisconsin. Named in the suit as defendants are Jim Towey, director of White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, the Secretaries of the Departments of Justice, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, eight cabinet-level or federal "faith czars," and the head of the Centers for Disease Control. FFRF alleges that the defendants are in clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by "using federal taxpayer appropriations to support activities that endorse religion and give faith-based organizations preferred positions as political insiders." The actions that FFRF cite as unconstitutional include: "the funded support of national and regional conferences, at which faith-based organizations are singled out as particularly worthy of federal funding because of their religious orientation, and the belief in God is extolled as distinguishing the claimed effectiveness of faith-based social services; give preferences for federal funding to faith-based organizations because such organizations are faith-based; act to promote capacity building of faith-based organizations, all of which activities give support to and the appearance of religious endorsement to reasonable observers and/or listeners ..." "The [faith-based] initiative does not fund religion but rather makes it easier for religious groups to navigate cumbersome federal regulations to apply for grants," says White House spokesman Jim Morrell. Robert Tuttle, a law professor at Georgetown University School of Law and co-director of legal research for the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy explains that the suit brought forth by FFRF has some procedural problems. "You can't just launch wholesale challenges to a general structure rule. You have to allege specific things that went wrong with specific programs." The President Creates Three New Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives by Executive Order and More Agency Regulations are Announced On June 1, President Bush signed an Executive Order creating three additional Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives within the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Commerce, and the Small Business Administration. The new agency centers brings the total now to ten out of the possible 21 grant making agencies. The faith-based centers have been created to audit the agency's existing rules and regulations and to propose changes so that the agency can contract with religious and faith-based organizations for social services. The centers created in the past have all proposed new rules that explicitly state that organizations are eligible to participate in agency programs without regard to religious character or affiliation, and that such organizations may not be excluded from competition of agency assistance awards or sub-awards. New regulatory reforms continue to come out of the faith-based centers created by past executive orders. These reforms are able to carry out the president's promise to enable faith-based charities to receive federal tax dollars for providing social services programs. One minor stipulation applies to the religious organizations that receive awards; government money cannot be used to finance "inherently religious activity." Inherently religious activity is described in the rules as "worship, religious instruction, or proselytization." While these activities can be carried out by tax-funded grantees, they should be done during a separate time or location from the allowable activities. Agencies that recently proposed new rules or announced a final rule include the Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and U.S. Agency for International Development. Congress Works to Include Religion in Legislation Regardless of their failed attempt to pass a compressive faith-based initiative, Congress has slipped a few provisions from the president's initiative into different pieces of legislation. On June 8, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on "Beyond the Pledge of Allegiance: Hostility to Religious Expressions in the Public Square," which discussed the Constitution Restoration Act of 2004. A bill, which seeks to clarify that the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction over any element of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official personal capacity), who acknowledges "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."