The National Labor Relations Board’s effort to undermine the religious character of Catholic colleges came under congressional criticism Wednesday.
Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, Employments, Labor, and Pensions took aim at the NLRB’s decision last year that they were not religious enough to be exempt from its oversight, saying it violates the First Amendment.
The NLRB ruling applied to Duquense University in Pennsylvania, Manhattan College in New York and St. Xavier University in Illinois.
The action fits a pattern by the Obama administration to secularize religious institutions by interfering in their hiring decisions and in forcing them to violate their consciences by providing health insurance coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilizations.
“It is simply unacceptable to allow the NLRB to judge whether a private academic institution has sufficient religious character,” Roe said. “A court has outlined a clear standard to determine whether federal labor law applies to an institution that professes a religious faith, a standard that adheres to Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment.
“It is time the NLRB applied the court’s standard and ended the uncertainty facing religious institutions.”
According to the Cardinal Newman Society, even the AFL-CIO objected noting that that Obama NLRB was unfairly interfering in the “college’s right to freely exercise its religion.”
Duquesene challenged the ruling in June, asking the NLRB to exempt it from union organizing efforts.
