UPDATE: Under Sebelius, Money for Trafficking Victims Still Going to Bishops

By Jessica Stites

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has chosen to fight an ACLU lawsuit challenging HHS’s practice of channeling its grants to help human trafficking victims through the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

The ACLU suit alleges that HHS is violating the First Amendment by allowing the USCCB, which passes on the federal money to groups directly assisting human trafficking victims, to bar those groups from giving victims any information about birth control or abortion. (see “Strings Attached,” Ms. Spring 2009). Says ACLU lawyer Brigitte Amiri, “We are not seeking liability or monetary damages. We just want the court to say to the federal government, ‘You can’t allow your grantees to impose their religious beliefs on subgrantees.’”

Rather than acquiesce, HHS filed a response Friday challenging the merits of the case on technical grounds. It claims that the ACLU does not have the right to sue on behalf of taxpayers in this instance. The ACLU is preparing its rebuttal.

HHS—now helmed by Obama appointee Kathleen Sebelius—also renewed its contract with USCCB for another year.

Groups that receive federal funding to help trafficking victims have expressed frustration with many aspects of the funding system, including the USCCB’s “gag” on giving out reproductive health information. They point out that trafficking victims are a vulnerable population, frequently raped or sexually abused, who need to be able to make free choices about reproduction. Subgrantees also struggle with the per-victim, per-month structure of the funding, which requires them to submit funding applications to the USCCB each month, hamstringing any long-term planning.

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