The Footbath Fracas

Published Jun 29 2007, 08:24 PM by Wendy Kaminer

        Should a public university build footbaths for Muslim students who are required by their faith to wash their feet before prayer? Yes, according to the University of Michigan-Dearborn, which is renovating two bathrooms on campus to include two new “foot washing stations.” The footbaths reportedly cost about $25,000, (out of a total renovation cost of $100,000,) raising questions about the expenditure of public funds for sectarian religious purposes.

        This is not a simple case; providing students with footbaths (so they don‘t have to use bathroom sinks) seems like a well-intentioned effort to accommodate the religious beliefs of Muslims without infringing on the rights of non-Muslims –- unless you consider the right to choose not to subsidize other people’s religious practices. To preserve this right, and religious freedom for all, the First Amendment bars the state from funding any religion (although the Bush Administration funds one of them anyway, with the tacit approval of the Supreme Court.)

        Of course, in practice, the use of university funds to build footbaths may be one violation of religious freedom that many students would not notice, or mind, absent a public furor about it. (Right-wing bloggers made an ugly issue of the University of Michigan-Dearborn case.) But that doesn’t diminish the importance of the principle barring public support for religious practices, a principle that could perhaps have been preserved if the footbaths were built with private funds. In fact, local Muslim leaders were reportedly prepared to raise private funds until the local ACLU declared that the use of public funds in this case presented no constitutional problems.

        It’s unclear how the Detroit ACLU squared this position with ACLU policy, which states, “No public resource shall be used to construct or maintain any facility which is designed for religious functions or ceremonies.” There's no question that the ACLU opened itself up to charges of hypocrisy by backing off from this case, given its policies, its historic commitment to separation of church and state, and its current, strong opposition to the Bush Administration’s use of public funds to support sectarian religious activities. Right-wingers pounced on the ACLU’s approval of the publicly funded footbaths, and, sad to say, they seem have a point.