An amendment slipped into SB 367 by Rep. Eric Turner on a 9-8 vote would sanction discrimination by contractors with state and local government against employees based on religion.
The amendment alters IC 22-9-1-10 which requires every contract by state or local government to contain a provision that prohibits the contractor, as an employer, from discriminating against an employee based on race, religion, color, sex, disability, national origin, or ancestry.
The amendment adds a subsection that says the contract doesn’t have to prohibit religious discrimination if the contractor is a school, educational, or charitable religious institution owned or conducted by or affiliated with a church or religious institution.
Honest to Goodness, Indiana!
Update: Speaker Bosma apparently doesn’t think this is a good idea and, according to Tony Cook, writing for the Indy Star, will have the bill recommitted to have the amendment stripped out. Still, this doesn’t seem like the sort of language that ought to require a lot of legislative procedural contortions to defeat.
So what’s the scope of “affiliated with”? St. Vincent’s Hospital in Indianapolis can now refuse to hire people outside of the Roman Catholic faith?
Well, it wouldn’t be a breach of the contract with the State or with local government if they refused to hire people on the basis that they are Presbyterians.
I assume that includes 75% of the hospitals of Indiana (Medicaid), most of the parochial schools (Vouchers) and any other business that wants to lay a claim that hiring someone is against their religion.
So a Catholic school shouldn’t be able to favor Catholics in their hiring practices? So a Jewish school couldn’t either? They’ve always done that. There probably isn’t a private school in the state that doesn’t receive some money from the state either directly or indirectly. Not sure what I’m missing, but the amendment doesn’t seem reasonable at all. In fact, it seems to be consistent with current practices.
That’s not what this says. It says that Catholics can keep receiving state money even if it has a policy to hire Catholics, Jews, and Presbyterians but discriminate against Muslims.
Don’t you need a bigger file cabinet to hold the Wingnut files?
” There probably isn’t a private school in the state that doesn’t receive some money from the state either directly or indirectly.”
Too bad too. Maybe we should oppose the sort of direct subsidy of my tax money to kind of places which produce a corrupt bigot like Eric Turner?
Then again, he brings the Republican mega-church voters to the polls…
Sorry…I meant “unreasonable” at all.
I think it’s important to recognized Doug’s apparent distinction between an entity having a specific contract with a State agency and the application of employment non-discrimmination laws or the reception (under a statute not involving a contract) of State funds. I agree with Paul at least in that the parochial schools where religious doctrine is taught do seem to be able to give (at least) hiring preferences to those engaged in teaching that doctrine. SCOTUS has reinforced that concept, I believe.
Paul, no a Catholic school should not be allowed to favor Catholics or refuse to hire Protestants for positions such as janitors, clerical employees, food service employees or other similar positions that don’t involve the teaching of church dogma. In Hosanna Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, 132 S.Ct. 694(2012), the Supreme Court concluded that a “minister” could not sue a church for employment discrimination under Title VII under the “ministerial” exception to Title VII. But unless a person falls within that narrow exception, Title VII expressly prohibits such discrimination.
What wingnuts like Turner never consider is that “strongly held religious beliefs” could be felt by people other than conservative Christians. And they when they’re bit in the butt by this law, they’ll scream unfair discrimination, without irony.
Wingnuts like Turner do not consider anyone’s beliefs to be strongly held except for theirs. But on a side note, this amendment was him doing a favor for IWU (in his district in Marion) to pay back and support a single group that had its lucrative state contract cancelled. Not sure if the professors they hire and the other support staff involved with the contract would be “ministry” hires.
Brian Bosma boots the bill back, and the provision is removed.
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2014/02/25/lawmakers-remove-religious-discrimination-proposal/5781659/
Money quote from Eric Turner: “I didn’t quite understand the firestorm it would create.” Either he’s lying or an idiot. Or maybe he doesn’t talk to anyone outside his bubble. Which still makes him an idiot.
What’s interesting is that social media backlash appeared to play a big part in Bosma booting this back. For what it’s worth, if you look at the comments when the Indianapolis Star posts these kinds of items to its Facebook page, for the most part it’s people lambasting them, when even a year ago you’d get 50-50, or majority support. One lasting legacy of HJR3 and Freedom Indiana is that Republicans — perhaps to their detriment — got a lot of people paying attention to state politics when they didn’t before.
I believe that Indiana has always been a collection of isolated areas, where people from the north know nothing about what is happening in the south and vice versa. If people start to understand that many of these politicians have gotten away with playing to their base yet sound like they are off the rails to everyone else, who is actually listening, this could be a good thing. The nonsense laws discussed in this blog need to be aired and understood by people. People need to start understanding that Mike Pence is really an empty suit and that many of our legislators need to go away.
How dare you insult suits by comparing them to Mike Pence! Pence, a bag of bones and ambition seeking a soul, only seems like an empty suit, because he wants to be President more than anything