Dive Brief:
- A number of schools, including 60 under the Obama administration, have received exemptions from the gender equity law Title IX to legally discriminate against LGBT students and employees, and the U.S. Department of Education intends to make their names public.
- BuzzFeed News reports that before the Obama administration applied Title IX nondiscrimination clauses to LGBT populations, schools applied for waivers to keep women from seminary schools, ban unmarried faculty, and make their own policies over abortion and pregnancy.
- During the Obama administration, Christian colleges have applied for waivers to keep LGBT students and faculty from their campuses and remain eligible for federal funding, and no school has ever had its waiver denied.
Dive Insight:
BuzzFeed News published a list of schools in December that had waivers approved or pending. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) led a push among lawmakers to make the names of the schools that have received waivers easily available online for students, parents, and taxpayers to see. The Department of Education plans to do just that, posting applications for the waiver as well as the department’s response in the coming months.
While the waiver process is in line with the law, there has been pushback to the idea of legally justified discrimination on religious grounds. For the same reason companies have been targeted for their policies restricting insurance coverage for birth control or abortion, religious universities seeking to restrict the presence of certain individuals based on sexual orientation are sure to be criticized. In both cases, however, there is also an element of public support for religious freedoms. It remains to be seen whether the Department of Education’s transparency affects the waiver process moving forward.