On Wednesday, the House of Representatives will take up on a fast track HR 592, a bill to clarify that when FEMA provides assistance to repair damaged buildings, it may not single out houses of worship for exclusion from the federal aid.

There is good precedent for including houses of worship in federal disaster recovery assistance–it was done, for example, after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing attack on a federal building–and the law governing FEMA’s decisions does not exclude them. But neither does it explicitly include them. HR 592, the Federal Disaster Assistance Nonprofit Fairness Act of 2013, would simply clarify that houses of worship that are damaged by a natural disaster are eligible for FEMA repair assistance on the same basis as other nonprofit entities.

For background see the Wall Street Journal op-ed and the NPR story.