The "Sacred Cloth" Pride Flag is displayed following a ceremony at City Hall after a mass shooting at LGBTQ nightclub Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S. November 23, 2022. REUTERS/Isaiah J. Downing (Reuters) – A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by 40 LGBTQ+ individuals against the U.S. Department of Education challenging a provision of Title IX that allows religious colleges to seek exemptions from the civil rights law’s bar against sex-based discrimination. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Eugene, Oregon, on Thursday wrote that exempting religious schools from Title IX to avoid interfering with their convictions is "substantially related to the government’s objective of accommodating religious exercise." The Religious Exemption Accountability Project, an advocacy group representing LGBTQ+ former and current students who said they were discriminated against at religious colleges, sued in 2021 to have the exemption declared unconstitutional. The group argued that the exemption violated the students’ equal protection rights under the U.S. Constitution by treating them differently than other students due to their sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. Latest Updates But Aiken said that while the plaintiffs’ complaint was replete with allegations of unequal treatments of LGBTQ+ students by religious schools such as Bob […]
