After securing a legal victory against vague and misleading new “anti-terrorist” regulations, UUSC reentered the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) in the fall of 2006.

UUSC’s withdrawal from the CFC resulted in a loss of approximately $80,000 over the course of 2005. Many federal employees around the country were unable to give paycheck contributions to UUSC over that year.

In November 2004, UUSC joined more than a dozen organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International USA, in withdrawing from the CFC and pursuing legal action in response to new list-checking requirements. A change in federal policy required participating organizations to certify that they do not employ or provide funds to people or organizations identified on lengthy government lists as suspected terrorists.

The lawsuit, filed on November 10, 2004, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, stated that the policy was vague and misleading, that it violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and that the government did not follow appropriate procedures in creating it.

The lawsuit argued that the policy was “a misguided, unduly burdensome process that is vulnerable to abuse for political purposes. It leaves the door wide open for politicians and bureaucrats to misuse the lists to retaliate against political opponents, since there is no accountability or oversight regarding who is put on the blacklists.”

The outcome of the lawsuit was a new policy published in the Federal Register that provided greater clarity and privacy guarantees and does not mandate list-checking.

A major fault of the screening lists was the mystery surrounding their creation and maintenance. The lists contain many common names that can cause confusion. The lawsuit articulated the discomfiting questions that organizations face amid the confusion and the lack of guidance:

“If a participant organization with an employee named Steven Smith were to discover that the name ‘Steven Smith’ appeared on one of the specified lists, must it fire the employee within 15 days in order to remain eligible for participation in the CFC? Are there steps that the participant organization must or may take to determine whether its employee is the same person as the person whose name is on the list? If the participating organization had an employee named Steven A. Smith, and discovered that the name ‘Steve Smith’ or ‘Steven B. Smith’ appeared on one of the lists, would the organization be required to do anything? If so, what?”

The lists brought to mind the government’s anticommunist witch-hunts of the late 1940s and 1950s when people’s names were placed on “blacklists” and their reputations and livelihoods were often shattered without their being given a chance to defend themselves. In withdrawing from the federal giving program, UUSC hoped to ensure that the lessons learned by its forebears during the era of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy were not forgotten.
UUSC does not condone any human rights abuse, including actions defined by the International Criminal Court and other institutions as acts of international terrorism. Terrorism is antithetical to our mission.

For many years, UUSC has been a member of Global Impact, a coalition of 50 of the most respected international charities. It is through Global Impact that UUSC has established its connection to the Combined Federal Campaign and other workplace-giving programs.