Missouri: Christian college sues Biden administration claiming LGBT executive order violates freedom of religion
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – A Christian college in Missouri has filed suit against the US government, claiming that President Joe Biden’s ‘Executive order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation’ violates the school’s First Amendment right to exercise freedom of religion.
The College of the Ozarks argues that the Executive Order places an “impermissible burden” on the school because it requires transgender students to be housed in dormitories according to their gender identity rather than biological sex.
Under Title IX civil rights law, the college is required to comply with the order as it pertains to fair housing because it is a recipient of federal funding through student loans, grants, and contracts.
However, the school argues Biden’s order is hostile to its religious beliefs and practices, and violates its right to freedom of religion. In its lawsuit, the school claims: “By promulgating a Directive imposing liability on colleges with religious objections to sex before marriage or to transgender theory, Defendants have targeted the College’s religious beliefs and practices and shown hostility toward them. The Directive, and Defendants’ enforcement of it, imposes impermissible burdens on the exercise of religion in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
In a statement, Ryan Bangert of the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the college in the suit, said: “The school believes that the bible teaches that people are created as males and females. We’re designed by God in that way and the school honors that by housing men and women separately.”
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