A federal district court issued an order recently that allows three Christian post-secondary schools to intervene against a lawsuit that seeks to strip all students at private religious colleges of federal financial aid unless their schools renounce core religious beliefs. The suit, filed by an LGBT activist group on behalf of some current and former students, intends to prevent any students from using tuition grants, student loans, and any other federal financial assistance at schools that operate according to Christian beliefs on gender or sexual morality.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing the three schools—Corban University, William Jessup University, and Phoenix Seminary—asked the court to allow them to defend the relevant provisions of Title IX, the federal law under attack. Among other things, Title IX allows students to use federal financial aid at private religious schools that operate according to their beliefs.
David Cortman of ADF called the policy position neither reasonable nor constitutional.
The lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon to dismantle the long-established protections in Title IX preventing discrimination against religious schools in the disbursement of financial aid, yet no schools that would be affected by such a radical change were named in the case, so they were therefore unable to defend their rights until now.