Legislation and Policy Brief, Jan 2011
The District of Columbia (D.C.) marked a landmark civil rights achievement in December 2009 when the city passed the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act. The law’s enactment allowed D.C. to become the sixth jurisdiction to sanction same-sex marriage in the United States. Supporters hailed the law as a victory for lesbian and gay equality, while detractors vowed that their efforts to traditionally define marriage would continue. Among the most public opponents of the law was the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, which operates Catholic Charities, a leading service provider to low-income residents in the metropolitan area. The Catholic Archdiocese warned the D.C. City Council that it would sever its professional relationship with the city if the same-sex marriage law passed because same-sex unions are inconsistent with the Church’s core theological teachings. Once the law went into effect, over a year later, the D.C. City Council cancelled the foster and adoption program that the city’s Child and Family Services Agency and the Catholic Archdiocese co-administered for eighty years, citing that the religious organization was no longer eligible to provide services. Weeks later, the Catholic Archdiocese announced that it would no longer offer spousal benefits to its new employees. The political battle between the D.C. City Council and the Catholic Archdiocese remains heated, as the law’s full fall-out is yet to be realized. However, there are two observations from this conflict that should inform lawmakers and policy advocates alike. The first observation is that Catholic Charities’s choice to cut its employee benefits demonstrates the lengths to which some religious organizations will go to deny lesbian and gay equality. D.C.’s same-sex marriage law itself did not require that Catholic Charities discontinue its employee spousal benefits. Rather, the Catholic Archdiocese chose to eliminate spousal benefits for all of its employees to comply with the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which both were triggered by the same-sex marriage law. The Equal Pay Act requires equal compensation for substantially similar work, and Title VII bans employer discrimination on the basis of sex, both of which mandate equal compensation for employees performing similar work, including fringe benefits. Catholic Charities, therefore, would have been exposed to legal liability if the organization did not extend equal employee benefits to those with same-sex spouses. The Catholic Archdiocese ultimately elected to cut spousal benefits for every new employee rather than to
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Richael Faithful. Religious Exemption or Exceptionalism? Exploring the Tension of First Amendment Religion Protections & Civil Rights Progress within the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Legislation and Policy Brief, 2011, Volume 3, Issue 1,