Tag: Title IX

DOJ cancels plan to ‘vigorously’ defend religious rights

Mary Margaret Olohan – June 10, 2021

Following backlash, the Justice Department has edited a court filing to remove a comment indicating that it will “vigorously” defend religious rights.

In the Tuesday court filing, the Justice Department said that it will defend the religious exemption of Christian schools, a religious exemption included in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, as it applies to “‘sexual and gender minority students’ attending private religious colleges and universities that receive federal funding,” according to the filing.

The filing formerly mentioned that the Justice Department would “vigorously” defend religious rights — a comment that was taken out Wednesday following backlash against the Biden administration, the Washington Post reported.

The Biden administration’s filing opposed a motion from several Christian schools to join the court case in order to protect their religious exemptions. The federal lawsuit involves a group of students who sued the government for giving funding to religious schools that the students say discriminate against LGBTQ persons.

The Justice Department instead inserted the word “adequate” multiple times and removed four instances of the phrase “ultimate objective,” including part of a sentence saying that the Department of Education and Christian schools “share the same ‘ultimate objective’ … namely, to uphold the Religious Exemption as it is currently applied.”

“We welcome the Biden administration’s commitment to the Title IX religious exemption, but we do believe that the Christian colleges and universities whose rights are at stake should have a representative at the table, and in the courtroom, for these important conversations,” Council for Christian Colleges & Universities president Shirley Hoogstra said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

CCCU filed a motion to be an official participant in the case “so it can defend Title IX’s religious protections” in May.

Critics claimed that the move contradicts the Biden administration’s public statements on discrimination against LGBTQ persons. The Biden administration said in a March memo from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division that “[a]ll persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation,” according to CNN.

https://www.wnd.com

Former Students Sue to Force LGBT Orthodoxy on Christian Colleges

Tyler O’Neil – March 31, 2021</s

When five unelected super-legislators on the Supreme Court unilaterally amended the Constitution to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015, Chief Justice John Roberts warned that the ruling would pose “hard questions” about the freedom of religious colleges to operate according to their convictions. Former Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said, “It will be an issue.” This week, Roberts’ warning has come to pass, and the time in which Verrilli’s “issue” comes to the fore is now.

On Monday, 33 current and former students at federally-funded Christian colleges and universities launched a historic attack on religious freedom by filing a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Education (DoE). The lawsuit, Hunter et al. v. Department of Education, claims that the DoE violated the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution by granting religious exemptions to Christian institutions that allegedly “discriminate” against “sexual and gender minorities.”

“The religious exemption to Title IX impermissibly burdens the fundamental marriage rights of same-sex couples seeking to attend taxpayer funded religious educational institutions that prohibit their marriages,” the lawsuit, filed by the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, alleges. “When sincerely held religious beliefs become enacted as school policies that harm LGBTQ+ students at taxpayer-funded colleges and universities, the necessary consequence is that the U.S. Department of Education has put its imprimatur on an exclusion that demeans and stigmatizes sexual and gender minorities.”

“The federal government cannot claim a legitimate governmental interest in furthering discrimination that harms sexual and gender minority students,” the lawsuit adds.

https://pjmedia.com

Biden: Next Week He’ll Give Transgenders ‘Access to Sports…and Locker Rooms in Accordance With Their Gender Identity’

CNSNews.com Staff – January 14, 2021

(CNSNews.com) – President-elect Joe Biden is promising that on “his first day in office” he will issue an order requiring all schools that receive federal funding to let transgenders play on the sports teams and use the bathrooms and locker rooms that accord with their “gender identity.”

Biden will take office next Wednesday, January 20.

On his campaign website Biden promised to: “Ensure young LGBTQ+ people are supported and protected in our schools and college campuses by: Guaranteeing transgender students have access to facilities based on their gender identity.”

“On his first day in office,” says Biden’s website, “Biden will reinstate the Obama-Biden guidance revoked by the Trump-Pence Administration, which will restore transgender students’ access to sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms in accordance with their gender identity. He will direct his Department of Education to vigorously enforce and investigate violations of transgender students’ civil rights.”

Biden’s campaign website links to the “Obama-Biden guidance” this passage references. It was issued by the Obama Justice Department and Department of Education on May 13, 2016.

It says in part: “Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) and its implementing regulations prohibit sex discrimination in educational programs and activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance. This prohibition encompasses discrimination based on a student’s gender identity, including discrimination based on a student’s transgender status.”

“Gender identity refers to an individual’s internal sense of gender,” says this Obama-Biden order. “A person’s gender identity may be different from or the same as the person’s sex assigned at birth.”

https://www.cnsnews.com

US Senators Introduce Bill to Prohibit Males Who Identify as Female From Competing in Girls’ School Sports

– September 24, 2020

WASHINGTON — Five U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would prohibit biological males who identify as female from competing in girls’ school sports.

Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, Mike Lee of Utah, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Tom Cotton of Arkansas presented the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act” on Tuesday, which amends Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to specifically note that the definition of “sex” is based on the individual’s “reproductive biology and genetics at the the time of birth.”

“It shall be a violation … for a recipient of federal funds who operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls,” the bill reads.

Read it in full here.

According to Loeffler, the measure would penalize schools that violate the law and could also threaten their funding altogether.

She points to a case out of Connecticut in which the Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) implemented a policy allowing students to compete in accordance with their stated “gender identity.”

Two biological boys, who go by the names Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, were consequently permitted to join the girls track team at their school and compete as females — moving on to the New England regionals.

One of the female competitors, Selina Soule, who attends Bloomfield High School, wasn’t able to qualify for the 55-meter race at the regionals because Yearwood and Miller took two of the top spots. She came in eighth.

She and her mother, along with fellow runners Chelsea Mitchell and Alanna Smith and their parents, lodged a complaint last year with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which agreed to investigate.

https://christiannews.net

Conn. Girls Sue to Block Transgender Athletes

Newsmax – March 12, 2020

The families of three female high school runners filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to block transgender athletes in Connecticut from participating in girls sports.

Selina Soule, of Glastonbury High School, Alanna Smith, of Danbury High School, and Chelsea Mitchell, of Canton High School, are represented by the conservative nonprofit organization Alliance Defending Freedom. The organization argues that allowing athletes with male anatomy to compete has deprived their clients of track titles and scholarship opportunities.

“Forcing them to compete against boys isn’t fair, shatters their dreams, and destroys their athletic opportunities,” attorney Christiana Holcomb said in a news release. “Having separate boys’ and girls’ sports has always been based on biological differences, not what people believe about their gender, because those differences matter for fair competition.

“And forcing girls to be spectators in their own sports is completely at odds with Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics,” Holcomb said. “Connecticut’s policy violates that law and reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women.”

The lawsuit was filed against the Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and the boards of education in Bloomfied, Cromwell, Glastonbury, Canton and Danbury.

The Connecticut Association of Schools-Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference has said its policy follows a state anti-discrimination law that says students must be treated in school by the gender with which they identify.

The lawsuit follows a Title IX complaint filed last June by the girls’ families and the Alliance Defending Freedom with the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which is investigating the policy.

https://www.newsmax.com