CV NEWS FEED // Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) this week published an updated article warning of anti-family banks’ tactics to weaponize their financial services against pro-family and religious freedom organizations by “de-banking” them.
ADF explained that a bank can “de-bank” a company or organization, by refusing it access to its own bank account, if it decides that the organization’s mission does not align with the bank’s political agenda and values.
Banks including JPMorgan-Chase and Bank of America have both engaged in de-banking pro-religion organizations, such as the church ministry Indigenous Advance Ministries and the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF).
The NCRF Advisory Board members include Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and ADF President and CEO Michael Farris. In 2022, shortly after NCRF opened a bank account with JPMorgan-Chase, the bank canceled the account without notice or explanation.
Chase gave NCRF no response or explanation about the cancelation for weeks, until finally, ADF explained,
NCRF was … told that Chase “could potentially consider reopening the account” if NCRF took three actions: 1) disclose a list of donors who contributed more than 10 percent of its operating budget; 2) hand over a list of political candidates NCRF intended to support; and 3) divulge the criteria NCRF uses to decide who to support politically.
NCRF declined, and “Chase later gave a series of flimsy and contradictory excuses for why it needed the information,” ADF wrote. Indigenous Advance Ministries experienced a similar event in 2023 when Bank of America announced it was going to close the ministry’s deposit and credit card accounts without explanation.
Indigenous Advance Ministries supports orphans and widows in Uganda and shares the Gospel there as well. The bank’s actions forced the ministry to “delay paychecks to their hardworking employees in Uganda by a week,” ADF noted. “These people don’t live paycheck to paycheck, but sometimes meal to meal.”
However, these examples “are far from isolated incidents of viewpoint-based de-banking,” ADF argued, adding that many businesses remain poised to use similar tactics through their updated, vague policies:
In 2023, ADF’s Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index found that over 60 percent of the 75 largest tech and financial companies—including seven of the nation’s 10 largest commercial banks—have expansive “reputational risk” or “hate speech” policies that threaten their customers with cancelation or punishment.
These vaguely worded policies are a threat to everyone—and allow for censorship against Americans of every political and religious stripe.
The “deeply partisan” and anti-parental rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is among the “fringe activists” that “are explicitly calling upon financial institutions to make this threat a reality against religious organizations,” ADF highlighted:
[SPLC] published “Hate Free Philanthropy,” which urges philanthropic financial institutions to adopt policies that would prevent account holders from donating to mainstream, religious organizations that the SPLC smears as “hate groups.”
Unfortunately, CatholicVote has also been subjected to “unbanking.” In 2012, JPMorgan-Chase refused to allow CatholicVote to open an account for our political action committee. Another bank refused to allow CatholicVote to open up any accounts at all.
These decisions came after CatholicVote publicly supported marriage as a union of one man and one woman. Thankfully, we were able to find an alternative bank, but we should all fight un-banking lest it spread. Congress should ensure that banks support the First Amendment.
ADF also urged political leaders, lawmakers, and business leaders to oppose de-banking tactics and hold banks accountable for discrimination.
“Large national banks receive wide-reaching government benefits such as greater lending power, FDIC insurance rates, subsidies, bailouts and an anticompetitive chartering system,” NCRF Chairman Sam Brownback and ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of Corporate Engagement Jeremy Tedesco wrote in Newsweek:
That banks receive these courtesy of the government and taxpayers obligates them not to discriminate based on viewpoints in their services. And the danger that these benefits might be taken away gives financial institutions good reason to end their risky entanglement with fringe activism and cancel culture.
