Taxpayer Can Challenge Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative Spending

A taxpayer does have the right to challenge the expenditure of funds for President Bush’s “Faith-Based and Community Initiatives” based on the establishment of religion clause of the constitution.

The Seventh Circuit found that money spent by the executive branch for conferences under the program created by executive order gives a taxpayer the right to file a constitutional challenge to the faith-based initiative program. The court found there was no bar to the challenge just because the funds come out of the general appropriation to the executive branch. “Suppose the Secretary of Homeland Security, who has unearmarked funds in his budget, decided to build a mosque and pay an Imam a salary to preach in it because the Secretary believed that federal financial assistance to Islam would reduce the likelihood of Islamist terrorism in the United States. No doubt so elaborate, so public, a subvention of religion would give rise to standing to sue on other grounds,” Judge Posner wrote in the opinion.

“If the conferences at issue in this case are, as the plaintiffs charge, intended to promote religion, the fact that their cost is slight relative to the budgets of these various departments that sponsor them does not make that cost incidental. Otherwise, indeed, there would be no federal taxpayer standing in any case,” the court found.

Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., v. Elaine L. Chao, Seventh Cir. No. 05-1130, January 13, 2006.