Sponsors (14)
Requires tax and funding rules to ignore religious views on marriage, sexuality, and gender identity when defining "religious" status and bars federal agencies from disadvantaging religious employers for religious hiring practices.
The bill strengthens religious organizations’ access to tax benefits and federal funding by expanding what counts as protected religious exercise—giving religious groups broader operational and hiring protections—while reducing agencies’ ability to enforce nondiscrimination rules and increasing the risk that public funds or tax exemptions subsidize practices that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and other groups.
Religious organizations and nonprofits (who apply for 501(c) status) are more likely to qualify for tax-exempt status even if they hold or act on beliefs about marriage, sexuality, or gender identity, preserving their access to tax benefits.
Religious employers can hire staff who share their faith and maintain faith-based hiring practices while still receiving federal grants, loans, contracts, or cooperative agreements, protecting their ability to operate consistent with their beliefs.
Existing statutory religious defenses and exemptions (e.g., Title VII religious exemptions, ADA, RFRA, First Amendment protections) are preserved and explicitly available to religious employers using federal funds, reinforcing legal protections for religious exercise.
LGBTQ+ people and others (including job applicants, clients, or service recipients) may face allowed discrimination by organizations that nonetheless retain tax-exempt status or receive federal funds.
Taxpayers may effectively subsidize organizations whose policies conflict with public-policy goals such as nondiscrimination, creating moral and fiscal concerns about the use of public funds and tax preferences.
Federal agencies (and state/local programs tied to federal rules) may have reduced ability to enforce nondiscrimination conditions on grants, loans, contracts, or exemptions, limiting government oversight of recipients.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Official title: To ensure fair treatment of certain charitable organizations and recipients of Federal financial assistance, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 26, 2026 by Blake D. Moore · Last progress March 26, 2026
Makes federal tax and federal-funding rules protect organizations’ religious beliefs about marriage, sexuality, and gender identity when determining whether they qualify as religious and when they hire or receive federal grants, contracts, loans, or cooperative agreements. It requires that religious beliefs or practices on those topics be ignored when deciding whether an organization’s purpose is "religious" for tax-exempt status and bars federal agencies from disadvantaging religious employers for hiring or employment practices aligned with their religious standards. The change to the tax code applies to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025, and the bill also expressly preserves reliance on existing statutory exemptions (Title VII ministerial or religious employer exemptions), the ADA defense, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the First Amendment for covered employers applying for or receiving federal funds.