How SCOTUS decisions are used to fund a discriminatory nonprofit in Arizona
The court's rollback of LGBTQ+ rights are proving successful for certain businesses that receive taxpayer funds.
Despite an executive order from Gov. Katie Hobbs, federal court decisions have hampered local governments from enforcing their own nondiscrimination ordinances in relation to LGBTQ+ people. As a result, at least one current contractor that forces staff to sign a faith pledge claiming homosexuality is immoral and ignores trans people’s existence is still raking in taxpayer money.
In October, LOOKOUT reported on how Phoenix Rescue Mission, a religious nonprofit that provides services to unhoused people, openly discriminates against LGBTQ+ people through a statement of faith pledge they require all employees and volunteers to sign.
The agreement Phoenix Rescue Mission issues to employees states that God “immutably creates each person as male or female”; that marriage’s sole meaning is “the uniting of one man and one woman”; and that God “intends sexual intimacy to occur only between a man and a woman who are married.”
The religious nonprofit has received over $5.8 million in city, county and state funding since 2018, public records show.
In the first week of Hobbs’s tenure, she signed an executive order that updated a 2009 fair employment order to bar state agencies and contractors from openly discriminating against LGBTQ+ people. But while Hobbs’s executive order didn’t directly include an exemption for religious organizations and practices, that exemption already exists in federal law and other parts of state law.
An analysis of Phoenix Rescue Mission’s tax records and payments made by government agencies show…