(ChurchLeaders) In a lawsuit filed this week, 33 current and former students at U.S. Christian colleges and universities say their schools should be ineligible for federal funding due to LGBTQ discrimination that’s permitted due to religious exemptions. The class-action suit brought by the LGBTQ students names 25 institutions of higher education and aims to strike down the religious exemption in Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans discrimination based on sex.
“The Plaintiffs seek safety and justice for themselves and for the countless sexual and gender minority students whose oppression, fueled by government funding, and unrestrained by government intervention, persists with injurious consequences to mind, body and soul,” the suit states. “The Department’s inaction leaves students unprotected from the harms of conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and healthcare, sexual and physical abuse and harassment, as well as the less visible, but no less damaging, consequences of institutionalized shame, fear, anxiety and loneliness.”