Civil liberties groups said yesterday they are weighing legal challenges to two proposed new twists in the Bush administration's faith-based initiative: the use of vouchers to fund religion-oriented drug rehabilitation programs and the use of federal housing funds to pay for construction of buildings where worship is held.
In his State of the Union address, President Bush said he would ask Congress for $600 million to provide treatment for 300,000 drug addicts and alcoholics over the next three years. As an example of what he has in mind, he singled out a program run by Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, La., which says it relies "solely on . . . the Word of God to break the bands of addiction."
If the federal government were to fund such programs directly, legal experts said yesterday, the churches would have to separate their drug rehabilitation efforts from their religious activities. To comply with the Constitution, they would have to ensure that the government-financed programs were secular in content and that their religious activities were privately funded and held at a different time and place.
With indirect funding through vouchers, the administration contends, those restrictions fall away.
Under the proposal, named Recovery Now, drug addicts and alcoholics would receive vouchers from the government to help pay for the treatment of their choice, whether it be from a secular health center, a Catholic hospital, a private physician or a Protestant church. Religious groups could mix as much prayer, Bible study and proselytizing into their treatment methods as they wish.
"This program is funding treatment, not worship. But what you would term 'worship' is integral to a successful treatment program," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
Ira C. Lupu, a law professor at George Washington University, said, "The [administration's] theory is: It's the addicts choosing religion and not the government choosing religion, and that solves the constitutional problem."
That interpretation is based largely on the Supreme Court's decision last June upholding Cleveland's use of vouchers to help pay tuition costs at parochial and secular schools.
A federal court in Wisconsin last year ruled that direct state funding for welfare recipients to undergo drug rehabilitation at Faith Works Milwaukee Inc., a faith-based center, was unconstitutional. But the same court upheld a state program that gave drug offenders a choice of rehab programs, including Faith Works, and then helped pay their costs.
"So the people advising the president on this voucher program are being very shrewd and sensible," Lupu said. "This is a program that does not violate the Constitution so long as courts are satisfied that the beneficiaries have a genuine, independent choice between secular and religious programs."
But the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based advocacy group, predicted that vouchers for drug treatment would be challenged in court, partly on the grounds that few addicts have a genuine choice.
"If you don't want to go to a parochial school, there is a guarantee that you can go to a public school. But there's no guarantee if you have an addiction that you can get help, because in many cities there are long waiting lists" for treatment, Lynn said. "This is a new animal, newly to be tested in court."
Americans United, the Anti-Defamation League and other civil liberties groups also have objected to a proposal by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to subsidize the construction of buildings where worship is held. Under the proposed regulation, if a church used 30 percent of its new structure for social programs, the government would pay 30 percent of its cost.
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL's national director, said the HUD proposal would require perpetual government monitoring of how religious groups use their facilities. "At this point, it's only a proposal. But we think it's blatantly unconstitutional, and if it proceeds, we would seriously consider litigation," he said.