Big Mother: Joe Biden’s War On Religious Daycares

While members of her own party seem skeptical about the inflation-inducing cost of President Joe Biden’s social spending bill, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has announced that the “Build Back Better” act snagged a huge endorsement: the Son of God. At an October 20 rally, Pelosi said that our Lord Jesus Christ practically demanded that the United States enact a universal pre-K program:

Christ said, “Suffer little children to come unto [M]e.” All children – all children in our country are about our country’s future. And we want to make sure that all children have the opportunity that they deserve. They’re all blessings containing their spark of divinity. 

Pelosi did not explain how her remarks align with indefatigable advocacy of abortion-on-demand until birth, which she has called “sacred ground.” Nor does the biblical passage she quoted have anything to do with government acting as the whole nation’s childcare provider. But there’s a larger contradiction, which carries weightier consequences for Americans if the president’s top legislative item passes: The Build Back Better act wages war on the very place millions of American children would hear Jesus’ words — religious daycare centers — preventing them from modeling their religion’s teachings about transgenderism and sex.

Congressional Democrats have touted the approximately $400 billion of funding the Build Back Better act dedicates to universal pre-K. The BBB establishes an Obamacare-style program of subsidies for childcare for six years, with states left holding the bag for the unfunded mandate at the end of that time. Taxpayers would pick up the daycare tab for parents making less than 75% of the state’s median income — and keep paying for families making up to $300,000 a year. Recipients would not spend more than 7% of their income on childcare. The bill also saddles daycare providers with onerous new restrictions, including hefty minimum salaries.

Proponents point out that the bill explicitly allows religious daycares to receive federal funding. “Nothing in this section shall preclude the use of such certificates for sectarian [e.g., religious] childcare services if freely chosen by the parent,” the bill says. But two of the least-discussed provisions of the bill would squeeze out faithful Christian and Jewish daycare providers from the market in favor of government-controlled (or government-obedient) childcare centers.

Much of the opposition has focused on the less important of these two provisions: The bill could be interpreted as excluding religious facilities from receiving federal funds. “Eligible child care providers may not use funds for buildings or facilities that are used primarily for sectarian instruction or religious worship,” it says. The ambiguous wording leaves the law’s impact open to legal interpretation. But the Supreme Court has already ruled that excluding a church “from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution” in 2017 (Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc. v. Comer).

The real constitutional conundrum is not that religious childcare centers will not receive federal funding but that they will — and that government funds come with strings that would require believers to act against their faith’s traditional moral teachings. Provisions of the Build Back Better act could require religious or church-run daycares to hire transgender or LGBT teachers. In fact, it seems Democratic lawmakers deliberately structured the bill to force this choice on churches.

Let’s connect the dots.

Low-income parents already receive federal childcare vouchers under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF). Since the federal government considers the primary recipients of these vouchers to be the parents, not the facilities, the laws “allow funds to follow the child to any participating child care provider the parent selects, including faith-based providers.”

The Build Back Better Act changes all that. The BBB, in a clause added by Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-VA), would designate childcare funds as “federal financial assistance” — meaning that church- or synagogue-run daycares would have to abide by federal “nondiscrimination” policies in hiring. These include the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Title IX. Although neither law contains a word to that effect, the Supreme Court and the Biden administration have interpreted the laws as meaning that employers cannot refuse to hire homosexual or transgender employees.

The U.S. Department of Labor specifies:

Programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance must comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities; and the Age Discrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of age. Education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance also must comply with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex. (Emphasis added.)

The Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) states that no one subject to Title VII