A coalition of 13 not-for-profit groups took on the U.S. government and won. By commencing litigation (recently dropped), these organizations-including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. and the Natural Resources Defense Council-persuaded the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to rescind its recently adopted requirement that, as a condition of participating in the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), applicants screen recipients of funds and employees against various official watch lists. In so doing, they struck a significant blow to the administration’s hydra-headed “war on terror”-which has often degenerated into a wrongheaded war on civil liberties.
The CFC, administered by OPM, is the only instrumentality through which charities may regularly solicit federal workers on the job. More than 2,000 such organizations receive money from the CFC; in 2003, it raised almost $50 million. Since 1984, its basic structure has remained the same. But in 2004, OPM adopted a novel certification as part of the CFC’s application form: Would-be participants had to attest that they did “not knowingly employ individuals or contribute funds to organizations” appearing on “terrorist related lists promulgated by the U.S. Government, the United Nations, or the European Union.” (For 2005, the latter two sources of lists were omitted.) Issued in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the major U.S. governmental schedules, Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) and Terrorist Exclusion List, consist of individuals or groups allegedly linked to terrorism or money laundering, with whom various statutes limit or ban transactions.
