A growing list of Jewish groups, including the Conservative movement, joined the Reform movement and progressive Jewish groups on Wednesday to oppose a House billscheduled for a vote Thursday, which would streamline the process for the Treasury Department to remove tax exemptions for groups providing material or financial support to U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations.

In a joint letter to members of Congress Led by the Reform Judaism Religious Action Center (RAC), 55 Jewish groups expressed “strong opposition” to the legislation, which would allow the Treasury Secretary to unilaterally determine that a charity supports terrorism, rather than to require a court decision as under current law – which has rarely been applied.

The groups argued that the legislation “threatens to politicize decisions that should be made in a neutral, deliberative manner” and that current procedures are “less susceptible to political interference or chilling effect on speech and activity that HR 9495 is likely to have.”

Notable signatories to the letter include the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the rabbinical arm of the Reform movement), Hadassah, Jewish Women International, the National Council of Jewish Women, Mazon, the Rabbinical Assembly, Reconstructing Judaism, the Union for Reform Judaism and the United Synagogue. of conservative Judaism.

They joined more progressive Jewish groups that opposed the legislation.

Several local federations and community relations councils, including the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor and the Bluegrass Jewish Federation, also signed the RAC letter, as well as several synagogues and others local Jewish organizations. The National Jewish Federations of North America did not respond to a request for comment.

Unlike other major faiths, the Orthodox Union supports this legislation. AIPAC supports the bill, as does the Anti-Defamation League, although the ADL is urging lawmakers to add due process protections before it passes the House.

Supporters of the bill argue that it is necessary to cut off U.S. nonprofit funding and support for Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, and argue that opponents have exaggerated its scope.

Some cite the case of the Holy Land Foundation, a now-shuttered nonprofit whose founders were convicted and sentenced to prison for supporting terrorism after paying millions of dollars to Hamas, as an example of the need for this legislation.

Some analysts claim that the Holy Land Foundation functionally reformed and currently operates under new names.

The House passed a previous version of the bill with near unanimous support in April, but in the months since, an aggressive progressive lobbying campaign led by the ACLU against the legislation has resumed, with opponents warning that the legislation would give the new Trump administration unlimited authority to declare that non-profit organizations that oppose it support terrorism and shut them down.

The ACLU has long opposed efforts to shut down American charities because of their ties to terrorism, and in a 2009 report claimed that the Holy Land Foundation had been unfairly targeted and discriminated against because it was a Muslim group, dismissing the substance of the accusations against the group as unproven or misleading.