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*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*
April 19, 2023
www.texasattorneygeneral.gov
*PRESS OFFICE: (512) 463-2050*
[email protected]
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*Paxton Challenges Biden Administration?s Efforts to Remove First Amendment Protections for Religious Student Organizations in Higher Education?*
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AUSTIN ? Attorney General Paxton has sent a multistate letter to the U.S. Department of Education condemning the Biden Administration?s move to rescind an existing regulation that protects the religious freedom of college students.??
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A proposed federal rule would remove a regulation that helps guarantee that universities receiving Education Department grants respect the First Amendment. Under the existing regulation, religious student organizations may not be denied ?any right, benefit, or privilege? that is afforded to other student organizations, helping ensure that administrators respect the constitutionally protected exercise of religious beliefs.??
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Protecting the existing rule is a priority as religious student organizations are increasingly targeted. Both left-wing university administrators and Biden?s Department of Education conduct brazen attacks on the rights of students seeking religious fellowship with like-minded peers. By removing First Amendment protections, the proposed rule would intensify the hostility to students? constitutionally protected right to religious expression.??
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The Ohio-led comment letter states: ?[R]eligious students have greatly enriched campus communities, through charity, service, temperance, and commitment to learning. They are owed the right to freely exercise their religion, however out of fashion with an increasingly anti-religious bureaucratic regime that might be. Instead, the proposed rule incentivizes the maltreatment of religious groups by uniquely labeling them discriminators.??
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To read the full letter, click here [ [link removed] ].?
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