Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

25. Small Business Administration · Notable

Finalize the rule removing SBA religious exclusions

Partially done

755 25. Small Business Administration

“Finalize the Trump Administration’s proposed rule or publish its own updated proposed rule to remove the unconstitutional regulations.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The SBA eliminated the religious exclusion from its disaster lending by announcement rather than by rulemaking. Its news release of 2025-07-14 says the agency "has reversed" the regulation that made any entity "principally engaged in teaching, instructing, counseling, or indoctrinating religion" ineligible for Economic Injury Disaster Loans, and that "effective immediately, faith-related organizations are now eligible for agency disaster relief"; the same release launched an SBA Center for Faith under Executive Order 14205, which the June 2026 reorganization then established as a permanent Faith Office. `partial` rather than `done` because the instrument the Quote names does not exist: neither the January 19, 2021 proposed rule ("Ensuring Equal Treatment for Faith-Based Organizations in SBA's Loan and Disaster Assistance Programs", 2021-00446) nor any updated proposed rule has been finalized or published in the window, and 13 CFR 123.301(g) is still on the books — it appears verbatim in the Code of Federal Regulations as of the 2026-08-28 issue, with an amendment history ending at 88 FR 39341 (2023). The business-loan half of the ask, 13 CFR 120.110(k), was removed and reserved before the window, by an SBA rule of 2022-06-30.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The ask has two objects and they are in different states. 13 CFR 120.110(k) (business loans) was removed and reserved by 87 FR 38908, 2022-06-30 — pre-window, so it is a lead here, not Evidence: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2022-06-30/html/2022-13483.htm . 13 CFR 123.301(g) (economic injury disaster loans) is still codified; read on 2026-09-01 through the eCFR API for the 2026-08-28 issue of title 13 (ecfr.gov/api/versioner/v1/full/2026-08-28/title-13.xml?part=123&section=123.301). That URL is not written as Evidence because eCFR’s human pages redirect automated fetches to unblock.federalregister.gov and its API refuses a request without Accept-Encoding, so npm run check:urls would report it dead.
  • Negative search: Federal Register, SBA agency filter, "religious eligibility" since 2020 — 4 documents, the newest 2022-06-30; "faith-based" — 8, the only in-window one being an unrelated federal-financial-assistance proposed rule (2026-10817); zero SBA rules or proposed rules in the Corpus mention religion. The 2021 proposed rule has neither been finalized nor withdrawn.
  • Nearby (scan triage and review, 2026-10-01, tenth run): SBA’s “constitutional concerns” rule does not touch 13 CFR 123.301(g). FR 2026-19878, “Removing Constitutional Concerns From SBA Programs” (91 FR 61295, effective 2026-09-29), removes affirmative-action requirements. The matcher did not propose it; the triage found it by reading every new rule’s title, since the Mandate also calls the religious exclusions “unconstitutional regulations”. The review read the amendatory instructions in full. They amend only 13 CFR part 112 (§112.3(b)(3) removed, §112.4 revised, §112.7(a) and (d) removed), and part 123 does not appear anywhere in the text. Status unchanged.
  • Boundary: attempted is arguable, on the reading that a press release is not a legal change and the regulation still stands. Held at partial because the agency states the eligibility change is in force, which is a piece of the ask delivered by other means (playbook §3).
Action
issue
Object
January 19, 2021 proposed rule removing SBA religious exclusions
ID
2055