Repeals Religious Freedom Protections for People Using Social Services

Executive Order 14148: Repeals Religious Freedom Protections for People Using Social Services

Official Title: Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions

Date Signed: January 20, 2025

Key Provisions:

• Rescinds dozens of President Biden’s Executive Orders, including Executive Order 14015, ‘Establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.’
• Repeals Biden’s Executive Order which laid the groundwork to protect the religious freedom of people who rely on government-funded services, including food banks, homeless and domestic violence shelters, job training, and elder care. The rules implementing Biden’s executive order helped ensure that people in need would not be pressured to participate in religious activities or required to meet a religious litmus test to get critical services. These regulations:
• Reinstated the requirement that people seeking services be informed of their religious freedom rights, which include that they can’t be discriminated against because of their religion or because they are nonreligious, they can’t be required to pray or participate in religious activities, and they can file a complaint if their rights are violated.
• Reinstated safeguards that ensure that people who obtain social services through vouchers are not forced to attend or participate in religious activities.
• Eliminated Trump 1.0 provisions that were designed to allow social service providers to refuse to provide key services, and that were intended to open the door to discrimination in taxpayer-funded programs.

Threats to Religious Freedom:

• Rescinding Biden’s Executive Order signals Trump’s intent to repeal religious freedom protections for people using social services and to misuse religious liberty to provide a license to discriminate.
• The first Trump administration put in place regulations that stripped away religious freedom protections from people, often vulnerable and marginalized, who rely on government-funded social services. Rather than focusing on serving people in need, the regulations instead elevated the religious interests of taxpayer-funded organizations, some of which receive millions of dollars each year of government money.
• For example, under Trump’s faith-based regulations, a person who goes to a soup kitchen could be asked to pray before they are served. In that situation, a person must choose between praying or walking away from the food they need. Even if they share the faith of the religious organization running the soup kitchen, it is coercive. But it’s even worse if the person follows a different faith or no faith at all; the meal becomes an opportunity for the taxpayer-funded provider to proselytize and to pressure a person into praying or accepting the provider’s religious belief. A taxpayer-funded provider could also potentially claim a religious belief as an excuse to deny service to someone based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, or even race.
• The Freethought Caucus applauded the Biden administration’s updated regulations and urged the administration to rescind the remaining Department of Justice (DOJ) memoranda and opinions that license discrimination in the false name of religious freedom.
• We will monitor the Trump administration as it repeals those regulations and moves towards dangerous and discriminatory policies for faith-based organizations and neighborhood partnerships, as laid out in Executive Order 14205: Establishment of the White House Faith Office.