By Bob Allen
Colleges and universities requesting religious exemptions to federal non-discrimination standards will have their waivers posted online in a searchable database to be developed in coming months by the U.S. Department of Education.
Catherine Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, responded Jan. 20 to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of eight senators who wrote a letter last month seeking transparency in Title IX waiver requests they believe “allow for discrimination under the guise of religious beliefs.”
Lhamon said in recent years the department “has received an increasing number of requests for religious exemptions” from Title IX, a federal law passed in 1972 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.
The LGBT media organization The Column and advocacy groups including the Human Rights Campaign and Campus Pride all recently published names or faith-based colleges and universities — including several affiliated with Baptist state conventions — requesting waivers since the Obama administration changed Title IX in 2014 to prohibit discrimination “based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.” The change was made in an effort to combat student-on-student violence against LGBT individuals.
Lhamon said the recent waiver requests come from private schools who claim certain Title IX obligations would violate the institution’s controlling religious tenets. While the law carves out an exemption for such schools, Lahmon said she agrees with the eight senators that the public has right to know their identities.
She said her office is in the process of preparing the exemption requests and the department’s responses for “posting on our website with a basic search tool so that applicants, students, parents and others can be better informed about which educational institutions have sought and/or received a religious exemption.”
“I expect to have those documents posted sometime in the coming months,” Lhamon said.
The Human Rights Campaign, with 1.5 million members and the nation’s largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, praised the Education Department’s decision.
“We have been alarmed by the growing trend of schools quietly seeking the right to discriminate against LGBT students, and not disclosing that information publicly,” said HRC President Chad Griffin. “We are encouraged that the Department of Education is answering our call for greater transparency to help ensure no student unknowingly enrolls in a school that intends to discriminate against them. We believe that religious liberty is a bedrock principle of our nation, however, faith should never be used as a guise for discrimination.”
The Baptist Message, state newspaper for the Louisiana Baptist Convention, said “homosexual activists” were targeting Southern Baptist colleges and universities because of their Christian beliefs.
“Christian schools have been forced into a position of requesting such exemptions because Title IX provisions — which were drafted in 1972, in general, to shield women from sexual harassment and give them equal access to education and athletic programs — have been expanded under President Obama beyond providing protections on the basis of biological sex (male and female) to include behavior such as homosexuality and the mental self-concept of gender identity,” wrote Editor Will Hall.
“Now, any school receiving federal money must comply with these expanded rights, or in the case of faith-based organizations, request specific waivers with regard to admissions, housing, facilities, athletics, codes of conduct, employment, counseling, financial assistance and health insurance.”
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