The Department of Justice (DOJ) signaled its support for religious colleges accused of discriminating against LGBTQ+ students in a Tuesday court filing. The move was a surprise to advocates, given the Biden administration’s previous backing of full equality for queer and transgender people.
In a 12-page brief filed to an Oregon district court, the DOJ claimed that its interests are “identical” to those of 25 universities implicated in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year. In the complaint, a group of 40 LGBTQ+ students say that faith-based exemptions under Title IX allow colleges like Brigham Young University in Utah and Baylor University in Texas to pursue “conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and healthcare, sexual and physical abuse, and harassment” of queer and trans students.
Despite these stated harms, the DOJ asserted that its “ultimate objective is to defend the statutory exemption” under the Education Amendments of 1972, as well as “its current application.” That decades-old statute bans sex-based discrimination in federally funded education settings, and in March, the Biden White House signaled its view that LGBTQ+ students are covered under the law.
Plaintiffs in the case, which asks the federal government to stop giving taxpayer dollars to schools that discriminate, expressed disappointment with the DOJ’s decision.
“My clients feel betrayed by an administration that promised to protect LGBTQ+ students,” Paul Carlos Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, the group spearheading the lawsuit, told CNN. “The Biden administration did not need to defend this unconstitutional religious exemption, and they certainly did not need to say that it ‘shares the same ultimate objective’ as anti-LGBTQ extremist group Alliance Defending Freedom.”
As Southwick’s statement suggests, the Biden administration potentially has strange bedfellows in backing anti-LGBTQ+ universities. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group, has lobbied to sign onto the lawsuit, according to the queer news site New Civil Rights Movement.
Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, ADF is one of the most powerful anti-LGBTQ+ groups in the country. The organization has co-authored bills targeting trans bathroom access, sports participation, and access to gender-affirming care introduced in dozens of states across the U.S. and represented Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who refused to service same-sex weddings, at the Supreme Court. It has also fought against decriminalizing sodomy and lobbied for the forced sterilization of trans people.
Southwick said it will make the task of LGBTQ+ complainants “harder” if the DOJ “plans to vigorously defend” religious groups seeking a right to discriminate.
“[T]he government is now aligning itself with anti-LGBTQ hate in order to vigorously defend an exemption that everyone knows causes severe harm to LGBTQ students using taxpayer money,” he said in an interview with the Washington Post.
While President Joe Biden has not commented on his DOJ’s position, it appears to conflict with the groundwork he has been laying to further equality since his inauguration. On his first day in office, Biden called on federal agencies to apply the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling on LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination. That declaration led the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to declare bias on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in public housing to be illegal.
Within the past week, Biden signed a presidential proclamation recognizing LGBTQ+ Pride Month and reiterated his support for transgender youth in a tweet. In April, he shouted out trans kids under attack from their state legislatures in a joint speech to Congress, a first-of-its-kind gesture.
