Court rules against West Virginia in $5,000,000 religious grant controversy

Money meant for public infrastructure nearly funded anti-abortion initiatives

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The American Humanist Association has just won an important legal victory against 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.

Everything about this was shady, yet Republican lawmakers in the state predictably did nothing to prevent the transfer of money from happening.

Here’s how this even became an issue:

In 2022, in the wake of COVID, the U.S. government passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, and West Virginia’s Water Development Authority soon announced that $250 million of that money under their purview would be distributed via what they called the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund. Basically, non-profits or government agencies could apply for money to build things like “a water system, a wastewater/sewer system, stormwater system or an economic development type project.” That’s all perfectly fine. After all, these were secular projects that would benefit people across the state.

When the agency released its list of grant recipients last October, one of them raised some eyebrows: $5 million had been awarded to the College of St. Joseph the Worker, a private Catholic trade school based in Steubenville, Ohio.

The project consists of the acquisition, construction, and equipping of multiple education facilities for the in-class and on-site training of the five major construction trades of HVAC, carpentry, masonry, electrical, and plumbing (including areas for tools and equipment storage), materials for training, and all necessary appurtenances thereto

On one level, this might have been okay. Even if this was a private Ohio-based Catholic institution, they could be working on (secular) water-related projects to benefit the state of West Virginia. If you wanted to fight that in court, you’d have an uphill battle.

But the description didn’t suggest anything like that. The summary said the money would go toward construction of buildings at the college so that they could teach various trades. West Virginia wasn’t going to be a direct beneficiary of any of this.

That grant, by the way, was the largest on the list. The next closest was worth $1,257,495, roughly a quarter of what the Catholic college would receive.

The College of St. Joseph the Worker (screenshot via YouTube)

It was also bizarre because the college just opened up in the fall. This place didn’t have a track record of success. They didn’t have evidence that their graduates performed trade work in other states because they literally didn’t have any graduates yet. Hell, the whole college exists in a small building next to an auto care store.

The College of St. Joseph the Worker (via Google Maps)

It seemed like they were just tapping into West Virginia’s coffers—with money intended for specific water projects—in order to build up a private religious school in ways that wouldn’t help West Virginia at all. Unless, of course, these students were being trained in order to later move to WV and build various projects… but that wasn’t guaranteed at all.

But wait! It got worse! According to the grant application, acquired by reporter Steven Allen Adams of the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, the money wasn’t just for construction of these buildings!

According to information provided from several state agencies through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the College’s grant proposal for the $5 million would allow the school to expand across the river into West Virginia for several training programs, a satellite campus, scholarships, and the creation of a think tank focused on social conservative public policy.

Specifically, the grant would be used as follows:

• $2,150,000 to create a “construction and real estate development company” in Weirton, West Virginia.

• $1,650,000 to recruit West Virginia students (through scholarships and dorms) with the expectation that about 20% of them would return to the state after graduation.

• $200,000 to create a second campus in West Virginia.

• $1,000,000 for “advocacy activities.” Specifically, they intend to expand into bioethics ($250,000) and hope to build a research facility called “Center for the Common Good” in order to “support broadly life-affirming policy in West Virginia” ($750,000).

Wait, what?! They wanted that much money to promote anti-abortion policies?! And the state gave it to them?! Even though—I repeat—this money was intended for water infrastructure projects?! And even though the school is a registered non-profit, which means any “advocacy” would have to exclude lobbying work?

Adams later explained how this “research center” would function:

This think tank would focus on conservative public policy – specifically citing abortion and immigration/border policy as examples – using research, op-eds, speeches, educational tools, presentations, and proposals for the West Virginia Legislature.

How that would help West Virginia with water issues was anyone’s guess.

So how did this happen?

When college officials announced that they received the grant, they said they planned to invest $10 million in expansion, with half that money now coming from West Virginia taxpayers. That press release didn’t say anything about the “advocacy” aspect of the grant. Incidentally, the $5 million grant was far more than the school’s entire net worth, according to the Coal Valley News:

The $5 million is nearly double the $2,583,421 that College of St. Joseph the Worker Inc. reported as its fair market value of all assets for calendar year 2023, according to its IRS tax records. The College of St. Joseph the Worker Inc. reported receiving $806,701 in contributions, gifts and grants for calendar year 2023 — less than a sixth of the state’s $5 million grant.

That made the planned $10 million overall investment even more questionable since they didn’t have anywhere near that kind of money.

Republican WV lawmaker Del. Pat McGeehan, who was directly involved in facilitating the school’s grant application, praised the move just before Christmas, saying, “I’m thrilled about this project for our people in the Northern Panhandle, especially for our young men and women.” He added that this project was bigger than just infrastructure:

“The College of Saint Joseph the Worker is unique, insofar as it offers a holistic approach to shaping young men and women — one reason why I’m excited about it,” McGeehan said. “Nowhere in in the United States is there an institution that simultaneously trains the mind in the humanities while also in the manual trades.”

…

“Many of the problems our state suffers from are downstream of faltering local communities, weakened family bonds, and a younger generation without practical skills, who are quite often steeped in university debt,” McGeehan continued. “I’ll continue to do what I can to help reverse this trend.”

By that logic, a school that offered to build the state a single water tank could apply for water infrastructure funding even if a significant portion of the money would be spent training anti-LGBTQ activists.

When the Parkersburg News and Sentinel asked WV officials about this, the reporter got the cold shoulder:

When asked about whether it was appropriate for EEGF dollars to be used to create a conservative public policy think tank, the Governor’s Office avoided the question.

“Any additional educational or ethical components mentioned in the application are secondary and fall outside the scope of the administration’s main focus: to get newly-trained workers in the workforce as quickly as possible,” [C.J. Harvey, communications director for Gov. Jim Justice] said.

They were not secondary. They were part of the project! They were listed in the application! A million dollars is a million dollars, even if “advocacy” is the last thing mentioned in the list.

The problem wasn’t just the awarding of this grant for dubious reasons; there may also have been some laws broken. All funds dispensed through the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund were supposed to be approved by three different cabinet officials, including the Secretary of Economic Development. But the WDA Executive Director Marie Prezioso said she didn’t have those recommendations on file.

What was also bizarre about this grant was that West Virginia has plenty of trade schools already, including in the Northern Panhandle. They could have encouraged those schools to apply for grants that would have benefitted state residents—and students at those colleges; instead they threw millions of dollars across the state border so that maybe, one day in the future, some of it might return to them. It made no sense at all. Unless water was just the vehicle this college used to get a generous taxpayer-funded donation for their anti-abortion activism.

That’s why the American Humanist Association, with help from lawyers at the ACLU of West Virginia, sued the WDA earlier this year.

In the lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County, the AHA said its members in West Virginia, like so many others in the state, needed 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 was that this grant violated 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, because it says no privilege or advantage can be conferred onto any religious group and that no taxes can support a church or ministry.

The lawsuit noted that the Economic Enhancement Grant Fund (another name for the WDA’s grant program) was funded in part by the taxpayers in West Virginia. If a taxpayer-funded grant went to a Catholic school to help it achieve its faith-based goals, as this one clearly did, it was violating the state constitution. Furthermore, the document said, 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."

One other interesting twist to all this? According to the West Virginia Record, the case was assigned to Circuit Judge Richard D. Lindsay, who had just been 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 was the sort of person who might take church/state separation seriously though there was no real track record in that area just yet.

But now we have his decision, and it’s a decisive win for the church/state separation crowd. In a bench ruling (a written order will be issued within a month), Lindsay said the West Virginia Constitution prohibited the use of public funds to support religious education and advocacy. He’s giving the Water Development Authority 30 days to prove it’s adhering to the Constitution in that regard, something that seems downright impossible.

“We’re proud to have taken a stand on behalf of our members and are encouraged that the court held the line on this unconstitutional appropriation of funds,” said Amitai Heller, AHA legal director. “The separation of church and state is a non-negotiable, and the West Virginia Water Development Authority had no business granting public infrastructure dollars to fund religious education and advocacy. Our members saw this blatant violation of church-state separation happening in their community and in concert with the ACLU of West Virginia, we acted.

“Public dollars should always serve the public good, and we will keep fighting in the courts to defend this principle as long as we need to,” Heller continued.

The easiest thing to do is for the WDA to admit its mistake and just move on, but it may not be that easy. According to local news reports, the $5 million was given to the school last October, and accepting the loss in this lawsuit would mean the WDA has to take back the money. It’s not clear yet how they want to proceed.

As of this writing, neither the WDA nor The College of St. Joseph the Worker has issued any statement about the decision.

***Update***: I spoke today with the AHA’s legal director Amitai Heller and got a little more nuance about the decision. It’s tough to parse, in part because the judge ruled from the bench, and we have yet to see his written order. But specifically, the judge said the $1,650,000 intended to expand Catholic education, and the $1,000,000 for conservative advocacy were not okay because those directly promoted religion, in defiance of the state’s constitution. (It’s good to see a judge uphold church/state separation in that regard!)

However, the rest of the grant money—meant to go toward a “construction and real estate development company” and second campus in West Virginia—might be legal if the WDA can show those are about water infrastructure as opposed to promoting Catholic education.

It’s still a victory for the AHA and church/state separation, but the entire $5,000,000 grant hasn’t been rescinded. The Catholic school could still come out with quite a bit of it… if they and the state can show the money will go towards the WDA’s goals and not the Catholic school’s overall mission.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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