Allow Public Funds for Historic Preservation of Places of Worship

SCR102 is a Senate Concurrent Resolution that proposes to amend Article I, paragraph 3 of the New Jersey Constitution -- the provision known as the Religious Aid Clause. The amendment adds a single new sentence: "Notwithstanding the provisions of this paragraph, public funds may be used to repair or restore a church or other place of worship as part of a historic preservation program." The American Council supports this resolution and urges every legislator to vote yes and every constituent to demand that vote.

The new sentence operates as an explicit constitutional exception. The word "Notwithstanding" means the carve-out overrides the rest of paragraph 3 to the extent of any conflict. Readers should note carefully what the carve-out does and does not reach: it is limited, first, to repair or restoration activities -- other forms of public expenditure at places of worship are not covered -- and second, to situations where the repair or restoration is conducted as part of a historic preservation program. Ad hoc or non-program funding for places of worship remains outside the permission the amendment creates. The bill does not define "historic preservation program," does not require that a place of worship have historical significance as a condition of eligibility, and contains no neutrality, eligibility, or funding-source limits in the operative constitutional text. The ballot question asks voters whether they approve allowing public funds "to restore a place of worship that has historical significance," and the interpretive statement on the ballot refers to "places of worship that have historical significance" -- but those qualifiers appear in the ballot materials, not in the amendment's operative sentence. A constituent reading only the ballot question could reasonably believe historical significance is a legal requirement; the constitutional text as amended does not impose one. We note this gap not to oppose the amendment but because honest advocacy requires saying what the text actually says.

The amendment also carries forward without change the existing sentence in paragraph 3 that prohibits compelling any person to pay tithes, taxes, or other rates for building or repairing any church or place of worship contrary to what he believes to be right. That protection against coerced religious support remains intact word for word.

The resolution is a direct legislative response to the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling in Freedom From Religion Foundation v. Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders (Docket No. 079277). That decision held that Morris County's award of taxpayer funds to repair twelve churches -- as part of a county historic preservation program authorized by voters in 2002 under an open space trust fund -- violated the Religious Aid Clause. Because the prohibition is in the state constitution, only a constitutional amendment approved by the voters can supersede it. SCR102 is the mechanism for placing that question before New Jersey voters.

The amendment does not take effect by legislative action alone. Section 2 conditions the entire amendment on voter approval: once the Legislature reaches final agreement on the resolution pursuant to Article IX, paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, the proposed amendment must be submitted to the people at the next general election occurring more than three months after that final agreement. Before that election, the proposed amendment must be published at least once in at least one newspaper of each county, not less than three months before the general election, with newspapers designated by the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the General Assembly and the Secretary of State.

Section 3 prescribes the form in which the amendment appears on the ballot. In every municipality where voting machines are not used, a legend must immediately precede the question instructing voters to mark a cross, plus sign, or check opposite "Yes" to favor the proposition or opposite "No" to oppose it. In every municipality, the following ballot question must be printed: "Do you approve amending the Constitution to allow public funds to be used to restore a place of worship that has historical significance?" Immediately following that question, the ballot includes this sentence: "This would allow public funds to be used to restore places of worship as part of a historic preservation program." A separate interpretive statement required to appear on the ballot explains that a recent court decision found that a county could not give grants for the restoration of churches when those grants were used to repair churches as part of a historic preservation program, and that approval of the amendment would allow public funds to be used for the restoration of places of worship that have historical significance.

The American Council believes this amendment corrects an injustice that has cut New Jersey's faith communities off from historic preservation programs available to every other category of historic property. Places of worship are among the oldest and most architecturally significant structures in many New Jersey communities. Excluding them from broadly available preservation funding does not serve religious neutrality -- it imposes a penalty on religious character that secular properties of identical historic value do not bear. The carve-out SCR102 proposes -- limited to repair and restoration, and only within a formal historic preservation program -- is the kind of equality-restoring constitutional correction this situation demands, and it rightly places the final decision in the hands of New Jersey voters. We ask every New Jersey legislator to advance this resolution and every constituent to make that ask directly.