§ 110.012.Grant to Religious Organization Not Affected

The closing provision, and it carves an exception out of the application section.

Notwithstanding Section 110.002(b), this chapter does not affect the grant or denial of an appropriation or other grant of money or benefits to a religious organization, nor does it affect the grant or denial of a tax exemption to a religious organization.

The provision it displaces is the benefits clause of the application section, which applies the chapter to an act granting or refusing to grant a government benefit to an individual.

Without this section that clause would reach funding decisions, and a religious organization refused a grant could argue the refusal substantially burdened its free exercise.

The reason for the exclusion is constitutional. Government funding of religious organizations engages the establishment side of religious liberty, and a statute compelling funding under a strict scrutiny standard would create serious difficulty.

Tax exemptions raise the same question in a different form, since an exemption is a benefit conferred by not collecting.

The exclusion runs in both directions. The chapter does not affect a grant or a denial, so it neither compels funding nor prevents it.

A religious organization refused a grant is left to whatever other law provides — the constitutional provisions, federal law, and the terms of the programme itself.

The section fits the pattern of the chapter’s closing provisions. Each marks a field the chapter does not enter: the state constitution’s religion clauses, municipal land use authority, civil rights law, and now public funding.

Read together they define the chapter by what it leaves alone as much as by what it protects.