%1

In what could be a major setback for the government’s ability to fund religious charities, a federal judge has ruled against an Iowa program designed to rehabilitate prisoners through Christianity.

Federal judge Robert Pratt of Des Moines ruled June 2 that the InnerChange Freedom Initiative, operating at Iowa’s Newton Correctional Facility, violates the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion.

In 1994, things began to look up for Milan, Missouri, a remote, rural community of 2,000 that had been struggling for years with a declining farm economy and weak job market. Premium Standard Farms (PSF), the second-largest pork production company in the U.S., opened a state-of-the-art packing plant in Milan’s rural enterprise zone. Today the company raises 2 million hogs annually on 38,000 acres of rolling northwest Missouri hills, then brings them to Milan for processing.