Leadership Quote by Jose Serrano

Serrano’s line is doing two things at once: conceding religious autonomy while drawing a bright, taxpayer-funded boundary around it. The first clause nods to a long American instinct that churches and faith-based groups aren’t just another employer; they’re identity-driven institutions with missions that depend on doctrinal fidelity. Let them hire “their own,” he suggests, because the state shouldn’t be in the business of remodeling theology through HR policy.

Then comes the pivot that carries the real payload: “but not with federal dollars.” That’s the constitutional and moral firewall in six words. Serrano is signaling that religious freedom doesn’t automatically entitle an organization to public subsidy on its own terms. If an employer wants exemptions from standard anti-discrimination norms because it’s religious, fine; but once it takes federal money, it enters the civic marketplace where the rules are supposed to be neutral and broadly applicable. The subtext is an argument about complicity: taxpayers shouldn’t be drafted into funding hiring practices they might consider exclusionary, even if those practices are lawful in a purely private setting.

Contextually, this lives in the long fight over “charitable choice,” faith-based initiatives, and federal contracting: the Clinton-era welfare reform debates, the Bush-era Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and later skirmishes over whether grantees can prefer co-religionists while delivering publicly funded services. Serrano, a liberal Democrat with deep ties to civil rights coalitions, is telegraphing a compromise that’s also a warning: pluralism is protected, but public money comes with public obligations.