Department of Education Will Publicize Religious Colleges That Have Obtained Title IX Exemptions

As previously reported, over the last two years the U.S. Department of Education has granted a number of religiously-controlled colleges an exemption from Title IX where full compliance would conflict with their religious tenets.  With the exemption, the schools may continue to receive federal funds even though they discriminate in various ways on the basis of marital status, sex outside of marriage, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, or abortion. In a press release yesterday, Human Rights Campaign says that now the Department of Education has agreed to create a searchable database of educational institutions that have applied for and/or received such exemptions. HRC comments:

While the Department of Education has little discretion to deny these requests for exemptions, religiously controlled educational institutions should not be exempt from full transparency.