In November 2020, Department of Education (DOE) regulations went into effect requiring public colleges and universities that receive government grants from the DOE to “not deny any religious student organization any right, benefit, or privilege that is otherwise afforded to other student organizations because of the religious student organization’s beliefs, practices, policies, speech, membership standards, or leadership standards, which are informed by sincerely-held religious beliefs.” Over 1,200 public colleges and universities are grant recipients. However, in February 2023, the DOE under the direction of the Biden administration sought to rescind those regulations, claiming that the regulations are unnecessary, confusing and burdensome to enforce.
In voicing its opposition to the proposed rule changes, The Rutherford Institute rebuffed the DOE’s arguments, noting the need for greater consistency across public institutions when it comes to First Amendment rights and pointing to the double standards that come to bear when schools fail to apply non‑discrimination policies uniformly, allowing some student groups to restrict membership or leadership based on certain secular criteria while penalizing religious student groups for adhering to their own faith-based criteria. The current regulations help to prevent such discriminatory treatment and double standards by public colleges and universities against religious student groups. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals explained in a case involving discrimination of a religious student group by public school educators, “under the First Amendment, our government must be scrupulously neutral when it comes to religion: It cannot treat religious groups worse than comparable secular ones…. The government cannot set double standards to the detriment of religious groups only.”
The Rutherford Institute’s public comment on the DOE's proposed rule change is available at www.rutherford.org.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, defends individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
Source: https://bit.ly/415NlPd
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