Charitable choice is emerging as a significant issue for the campaign year. The latter effort, which was written into law for the first time during the 1996 federal welfare reform, is known as charitable choice. Several states, including Texas, New Jersey, Florida and Wisconsin, have their own versions.
Charitable choice threatens the most fundamental understandings of church and state separation.
Government has long reimbursed religiously affiliated charities for providing secular social services. The constitutionality of this practice is not in doubt. In 1898, the Supreme Court held that the government did not violate the Establishment Clause by funding a Catholic hospital for the indigent. Charitable choice programs will make little difference to these groups. It is a fair question whether it is wise for Jewish federations to be as financially beholden to government as they are, and whether this indebtedness has drained their programs of Jewish content and distracted the federation community from more parochial, but less well reimbursed, tasks.