Title IX of the Civil Rights Act forbids sex-based discrimination in education. Faith-based institutions that uphold biblical definitions for marriage and sexuality can request a religious exemption that allows them to adhere to scriptural beliefs on matters of sexuality.  The legal challenge essentially seeks to restrict students at faith-based institutions that adhere to traditional sexuality and gender beliefs from receiving tuition grants, student loans and any other form of federal financial assistance. In a statement, the CCCU called the lawsuit “frivolous.” 

A leading association of over 180 Protestant colleges and universities is coming to the defense of Christian colleges amid a lawsuit filed by former and current LGBT students who seek to revoke religious schools’ exemptions to Title IX discrimination law.

The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities filed a motion to intervene in a legal challenge against the U.S. Department of Education seeking to strip federal financial aid from college students who attend faith-based institutions that espouse biblical beliefs on marriage, gender and sexuality.

The lawsuit was filed in March by an advocacy organization called Religious Exemption Accountability Project on behalf of 33 LGBT former and current students who felt discriminated against on 25 faith-based campuses across the country.

Title IX of the Civil Rights Act forbids sex-based discrimination in education. Faith-based institutions that uphold biblical definitions for marriage and sexuality can request a religious exemption that allows them to adhere to scriptural beliefs on matters of sexuality.

The legal challenge essentially seeks to restrict students at faith-based institutions that adhere to traditional sexuality and gender beliefs from receiving tuition grants, student loans and any other form of federal financial assistance.

In a statement, the CCCU called the lawsuit “frivolous.”

“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 Washington, D.C.-based council argued.

Most of the plaintiffs of the lawsuit are former or current students of CCCU institutions. CCCU is an advocacy organization that claims over 140 member schools across the U.S., many of which subscribe to “sincerely held biblical beliefs, which include specific religious convictions around human sexuality and gender.”

Policies based on those beliefs could result in LGBT student clubs not gaining official campus recognition, transgender students not being housed in dorm rooms that correspond with their gender identity or prohibitions against same-sex sexual relationships.

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