In response to a lawsuit brought by past and current LGBT students seeking to rescind religious schools’ exemptions from the Title IX discrimination law, a leading association of more than 180 Protestant colleges and universities has come to their defense.
In an effort to dispose of federal funds for university students who attend religious institutions that support biblical belief in marriage, gender and sexuality, the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) has tabled a motion to interfere in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, reports Christian Post.
The suit in question was filed on behalf of 33 previous and present LGBT students who felt discriminated against on 25 religious’ campuses throughout the country, in March by an advocacy group called Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP).
Title IX of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education. Religious institutions that adhere to biblical definitions of marriage and sexuality may seek a religious exemption to allow them to follow their scriptural beliefs regarding sexuality.
The lawsuit aims to prevent students at faith-based institutions who adhere to conventional sexuality and gender beliefs from obtaining federal financial aid such as tuition grants, student loans, and other government aid.
The action is “frivolous” comments the CCCU.
The Washington, D.C.-based council claimed that “faith-based higher education has always been an essential element of the diversity of higher education in the United States – many of the first colleges and universities in the country were religious – and it is crucial that students continue to be given the opportunity to choose and access the college of their choice in a diverse educational landscape.”
The majority of the plaintiffs in the complaint are past or current CCCU students. CCCU is an advocacy group with approximately 140 member schools in the United States, many of which hold to “sincerely held biblical beliefs, which include specific religious convictions around human sexuality and gender.”
LGBT student clubs may not receive official university recognition, transgender students may not be placed in dorm rooms that correspond to their gender identification, and restrictions against same-sex sexual relationships may follow from policies based on those views.
Those schools, according to CCCU, are “transparent about their policies and behavior guidelines, which students voluntarily agree to when they choose to attend the institution.” Many of CCCU’s institutions have “core religious tenets that conflict with the Plaintiffs’ understanding of Title IX.”
“Campuses work hard to ensure that potential students understand their institution and its religious identity and want to be a part of that community,” says the CCCU statement.
The removal of Title IX’s religious exemption, according to CCCU’s motion to intervene, represents an “existential threat to religious higher education.” Furthermore, it states that it “will deprive religious colleges of the oxygen that gives them life by forbidding them, on pain of losing federal assistance for their students, from teaching and expecting adherence to their core religious beliefs.”
CCCU’s motion notes that as current concepts of sexuality and gender deviate, sometimes drastically, from the religious values that motivate every element of Christian campus life, the Title IX religious exemption has proved crucial to CCCU’s member universities.
The motion to intervene also argues that the Biden administration is opposed to upholding Title IX religious exemptions and said the rights of religious colleges “will go unrepresented and, thus, unprotected.”
“There is ample evidence that the current administration will not only fail to make the points necessary to defend Title IX’s religious exemptions as applied to sexual and gender minorities, but it may also instead be openly hostile to them,” it added.
Current and former students from Bob Jones University, Liberty University, Baylor University, Cedarville University, and Brigham Young University are among those represented in the REAP complaint.
According to REAP’s website, “REAP’s lawsuit asserts the constitutional and basic human rights of LGBTQ+ students, seeking to end the sexual, physical and psychological abuses perpetrated under the religious exemption to Title IX at thousands of federally funded schools, colleges and universities across America,”
The complaint alleged that such regulations at Christian schools resulted in the mistreatment and bullying of LGBT pupils. The CCCU, on the other hand, has refuted such allegations.
“While this lawsuit presents frivolous legal claims, the CCCU takes reports of student experience seriously,” the CCCU said.
“We are committed to learning, growing, and deepening our understanding of how we can provide and strengthen support for all students on Christian college and university campuses, as CCCU institutions should be places where all students feel safe, supported, and welcome. We know the college experience can be stressful, and even more so for LGBTQ students who are working to understand how their sexual orientation or gender identity intersects with their personal faith.”
In April, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a national religious liberty advocacy legal organization, filed a request to assist in the lawsuit on behalf of students at Corban University in Oregon, William Jessup University in California, and Phoenix Seminary in Arizona, in order to safeguard the universities’ religious exemptions from Title IX.
In a statement, ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of U.S. Litigation David Cortman stated, “This lawsuit [filed by REAP] wants the federal government to tell Christian schools, ‘To continue accepting students who have federal financial aid, all you have to do is to start acting contrary to your own beliefs.’ That’s neither reasonable nor constitutional,”
CCCU claims that its member colleges can only “further their religious missions if they are able to teach and adhere to their doctrines without interference from the government.”
“… [This litigation] threatens to suffocate religious higher education in America. For these reasons, combined with the fact that only religious colleges can fully understand the importance of the exemption and the current Administration’s open hostility to the arguments necessary to fully defend the Title IX religious’ exemption, CCCU is entitled to intervene as of right,” as per CCCU’s appeal.
