What does Project 2025 say about religious liberty and the separation of church and state?

If you are a news junkie like I am, you have heard about Project 2025, a 900+ page policy agenda published by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The document is a playbook designed to guide the next presidential administration in governing major federal agencies in a conservative image. Project 2025 plans for a complete upheaval of the structure, priorities and initiatives of the federal government.

What it envisions for religious liberty and the role of religion in governance, both explicitly and implicitly, is striking and troubling. Below is a brief summary:

EDUCATION

Project 2025 eliminates the Department of Education, leaving most all education funding responsibility to state and local governments. Other significant education points:

• With a goal of maximum “school choice,” the plan envisions every family having government-funded “education savings accounts” to use for any school, public or private. (p. 319) It would make the D.C. school voucher program “universal.” (p. 326)
• The proposal lowers federal charter school regulations. (p. 331)
• Project 2025 prohibits accrediting bodies from requiring policies or standards that “conflict with the religious mission or religious beliefs of the institution.” (p. 352)
• For those schools that are under federal control (D.C. public schools, Department of Defense schools, Bureau of Indian Education schools), Project 2025 seeks to set a policy-making example for states and local governments by requiring public schools to allow employees and contractors to live out their faith in the classroom regardless of the impact on students and parents, including the right to “use a pronoun that does not match a person’s biological sex if contrary to the employee’s or contractor’s religious or moral convictions.” (p. 346)

FAITH-BASED FUNDING

Most of the religion references in Project 2025 concern the access of religious organizations to government funding without having government regulations attached. If enacted, these proposals would upend long-standing church-state protections that bar direct taxpayer funding of religious organizations without significant safeguards in place. Project 2025 would:

• Increase USAID partnership with faith-based organizations. “Within weeks of Inauguration Day,” the plan says, the Office of General Counsel “should issue clear guidance on the eligibility of faith-based organizations for USAID funding … [which] should build on, not compete with, private-sector initiatives launched by global churches … .” (p. 265, 272)
• Rescind regulations that make certain religious organizations ineligible for SBA loans. The plan would eliminate the religious eligibility determination process – which ensures that such loans do not run afoul of the Establishment Clause – altogether. (p. 754-55).
• Not only protect from regulation but “prioritize” faith-based programs in receiving federal grants under both the Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) (p. 480-81) and the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) (p. 481) programs. Project 2025 says the federal government should “maintain a biblically-based … definition of marriage and family” and should allow organizations that believe that marriage exists only between a man and a woman to affirm that view in “healthy marriage” programs subsidized by taxpayer funds. (p. 481)
• Allow religious organizations to receive federal funds under Title X to provide family planning services without having to provide abortion referrals to patients who request them. (p. 491)

CONSCIENCE PROTECTIONS

Project 2025 would:

• Terminate the case-by-case evaluation of religious and faith-based organizations requesting a religious exemption to provide foster care and adoption services. Under Project 2025, all states and agencies requesting waivers from nondiscrimination requirements in placing children and selecting foster care parents must be granted. (p. 494)
• Allow health care insurers (p. 483) and health care workers (p. 491) broad exemptions from requirements to provide services to which they have religious and moral objections. Under Project 2025, all “HHS components” would be required to cooperate with investigations conducted by the Office of Civil Rights related to enforcement of conscience laws, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (p. 494).
• Establish via executive order “that religious employers are free to run their businesses according to their religious beliefs, general nondiscrimination laws notwithstanding, and support participation of religious employees and employers as federal contractors and in federal activities and programs.” (p. 586)
• “Encourage communal rest by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to require that workers be paid time and a half for hours worked on the Sabbath.” (p. 589)

Taken as a whole, this set of policy proposals would do particular damage to religious liberty protections in place for taxpayers and for beneficiaries of government services. It would open a free flow of federal funds to grantees empowered to use those funds for religious purposes while also declining to provide important services they object to on religious and moral grounds. Project 2025 envisions an executive branch that recognizes no line of institutional separation between church and state, let alone a wall. At the same time, federal agencies under this plan see virtually no limit to religious exercise. Public school teachers could disregard the well-being of their students, health care workers could deny requests of their patients, adoption agencies could set aside the needs of foster children – all if those are done in the name of Free Exercise. A terrible outlook for religious liberty for all.