CHRISTIAN POST – A federal court has ruled that Christian colleges and universities with traditional views on sexuality and marriage can continue to receive funding through Title IX, rejecting LGBT students’ efforts to strike down a religious exemption to federal discrimination law.
In a ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Oregon dismissed the case filed by a group of LGBT Christian college students and former students who sued the U.S. Department of Education in 2021 for providing religious exemption to Title IX discrimination laws to Christian higher education institutions.
Aiken, a Clinton appointee, concluded that plaintiffs failed to show that the original religious exemption granted by Congress decades ago for Title IX has a discriminatory purpose.
“Plaintiffs have submitted no allegations of discriminatory motivation on the part of those enacting the religious exemption. To the contrary, Plaintiffs argue that when Congress enacted Title IX, protections for — or discrimination against sexual and gender minorities — were ‘of no concern,'” wrote Aiken.
“Plaintiffs provide no evidence and supply no allegations involving the above-listed factors for the Court to consider and evaluate whether Congress was motivated in part by a discriminatory purpose when it enacted the religious exemption.”
Title IX of the Civil Rights Act forbids sex-based discrimination in education, but colleges upholding traditional definitions for marriage and sexuality can request exemptions that allow them to adhere to scriptural beliefs on matters of sexuality.
The court rejected the plaintiff’s claim that religious exemptions violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, noting that “the Supreme Court has interpreted it to allow, and sometimes require, the accommodation of religious practices.”
“Plaintiffs’ allegations do not plausibly demonstrate how the relief they seek in enforcing Title IX in religious schools is not the very excessive entanglement Plaintiffs argue is impermissible,” continued the opinion.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal nonprofit representing three Christian higher education institutions, celebrated the ruling …
