Atheists sue West Virginia water agency over $5 million grant to Catholic school
The state's Water Development Authority gave the money to the Ohio-based College of St. Joseph the Worker, in part to fund its anti-abortion advocacy
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The American Humanist Association is suing the West Virginia Water Development Authority (WDA) after the agency agreed to give a private Catholic school in Ohio a $5 million grant in part to expand its anti-abortion advocacy efforts.
I first wrote about this last week. In short, the WDA is supposed to fund things like sewers and infrastructure projects across the state. (And West Virginia is in desperate need of all that!) But they recently announced they were giving a massive grant to the College of St. Joseph the Worker based in Steubenville, Ohio.
That might be defensible if the school promised to work on (secular) water-related projects and trained students to go work in the neighboring state. But the school’s grant application didn’t suggest any of that. Tangible, water-related benefits to West Virginia would be minimal at best.
Instead, the application openly stated the school’s desire to create a real estate development company, build new dorms, and create a research facility called the “Center for the Common Good” that would advocate for anti-abortion policies in West Virginia.
The WDA should have tossed that application out upon arrival. Instead, they approved it without question.
Actually, even that’s not entirely accurate. In order for the application to be approved, it needed to be signed off on by at least one of three cabinet officials… and yet the WDA’s Executive Director Marie Prezioso said she didn’t have any of those recommendations on file.
“It was my understanding that we would be provided with a letter from the Secretary, however we do not have one on file,” Prezioso said.
If it had that paperwork, the grant would have been controversial for all the reasons I’ve already mentioned. But without that paperwork, it was arguably illegal before we could even get into those controversies.
That’s why the American Humanist Association, with help from lawyers at the ACLU of West Virginia, is now suing the WDA.
In the lawsuit, filed yesterday in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County, the AHA says its members in West Virginia, like so many others in the state, need access to clean water:
Tens of thousands of West Virginians wonder each day where they will get clean water, as it does not run out of the taps in their homes. The Defendant in this case, the West Virginia Water Development Authority, is tasked with providing financial assistance to communities to improve and protect water quality, protect public health, and encourage economic growth. The case at hand arises from the Defendants’ abdication of that duty, when it instead provided five million dollars of West Virginian tax-payer money to the College of St. Joseph the Worker, an out-of-state Catholic school. In so doing, the Defendants in this case violated the Guarantee of Freedom of Religion codified in the West Virginia Constitution, and the Plaintiff respectfully seeks the intervention of this Court.
The crux of the AHA’s argument is that this grant violates the part of the state’s constitution dealing with the Establishment Clause. Article III, Section 15 is very clear that state funds cannot go towards the promotion of religion. It’s actually more specific than the similar clause in the U.S. Constitution, saying no privilege or advantage can be conferred onto any religious group and that no taxes can support a church or ministry.
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever; nor shall any man be enforced, restrained, molested or burthened, in his body or goods, or otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument, to maintain their opinions in matters of religion; and the same shall, in nowise, affect, diminish or enlarge their civil capacities; and the Legislature shall not prescribe any religious test whatever, or confer any peculiar privileges or advantages on any sect or denomination, or pass any law requiring or authorizing any religious society, or the people of any district within this state, to levy on themselves, or others, any tax for the erection or repair of any house for public worship, or for the support of any church or ministry, but it shall be left free for every person to select his religious instructor, and to make for his support, such private contracts as he shall please.
The lawsuit notes that the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund (another name for the WDA’s grant program) is funded in part by the taxpayers in West Virginia. If a taxpayer-funded grant goes to a Catholic school to help it achieve its faith-based goals, as this one clearly does, it’s violating the state constitution. Furthermore, the document says, the WDA did this “intentionally, knowingly, willfully, wantonly, maliciously, and in reckless disregard of the Constitutional rights of West Virginians.”
"We're proud to take a stand on behalf of our members in West Virginia, because no one should have to pay taxes to fund someone else's religion,” AHA Executive Director Fish Stark said. “Humanists believe deeply in the freedom of conscience, and this attempt to force West Virginia taxpayers to fund religious activity is an offense against the Constitution and common sense. As a former West Virginia resident, I believe 'Mountaineers Are Always Free' means your faith is your business—no one else, and certainly not the government, has the right to push it on you."
Here’s one more interesting twist to all this:
According to the West Virginia Record, the case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Richard D. Lindsay, who just got elected in November. From 2018 to 2022, Lindsay was one of the only Democrats in the State Senate (he lost in his re-election bid). All that’s to say he’s the sort of person who might take church/state separation seriously though there’s no real track record in that area just yet.
The expectation of Christian privilege and entitlement runs deep in this country. The people behind this unconstitutional grant would likely go out of their minds at the mere suggestion a similar grant be given to any non-Christian religious entity. It just never ends, and it needs to. Legislators need to be held personal liable for defending measures like this in court.
This deal reeks like 3-day old fish on a hot summer day. Ohio's constitution has a similar prohibition on state funding of private religious schools [Article VI, Section 2]. I wonder what the citizens of WV would think about $5M being boosted from a state agency that's supposed to upgrade their water system but instead ended up in the coffers of a shady, storefront catholic school in OH. I think we're about to find out. Thank you to the AHA and ACLU for bringing this righteous suit.