Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas on August 25, 2017. Since that time, Hurricane Harvey’s statistics are overwhelming: 27 trillion gallons of water, approximately 90 deaths, approximately $190 billion dollars in damages, over 1 million destroyed vehicles, 800 flooded wastewater treatment facilities, and 13 flooded Superfund sites. The devastation from Hurricane Harvey prompted President Trump to sign a relief bill totaling more than $15 billion dollars in federal aid to be distributed through various federal agencies like FEMA. While necessary to begin the healing process, such relief packages gave rise to difficult legal questions such as whether federal agencies can or should distribute relief funds to religious entities. This symposium will present a historical perspective on the First Amendment's separation of church and state and current applications in the context of distributions of federal disaster relief funds to religious entities.
