US AID Inspector General's Audit Raises Questions About Funding of Religious Activities Abroad

According to the Washington Post, an audit performed by the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development has found the agency supplied funds to rebuild Iraqi mosques and to provide biblical lessons promoting sexual abstinence in Africa.  The agency is barred from using taxpayer dollars to support "inherently religious activities," but an agency statement defended the expenditures as advancing secular foreign policy goals. 

    The degree to which the Establishment Clause constrains U.S. agency activities abroad remains uncertain under existing precedent. In Lamont v. Woods, 948 F.2d 825 (2d Cir. 1991), the panel did grant taxpayers' standing to challenge the use of USAID funds to construct, maintain, and operate religious schools overseas as part of the American Schools and Hospitals Abroad initiative. However, in U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259 (1990), the Supreme Court had ruled that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to U.S. agents’ search and seizure of property owned by a nonresident alien and located in a foreign country, calling into questions the possible extraterritorial reach of the other constitutional provisions. The extraterritorial application of constitutional protections, including the Establishment Clause,has received some renewed attention after Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. ----, 128 S.Ct. 2229 (2008).

    Jessica Powley Hayden has specifically examined US AID related questions in two Notes: THE TIES THAT BIND: THE CONSTITUTION, STRUCTURAL RESTRAINTS, AND GOVERNMENT ACTION OVERSEAS, 96 Geo. L.J. 237 (2007) and MULLAHS ON A BUS: THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE AND U.S. FOREIGN AID, 95 Geo. L.J. 171 (2006).  

JFB