An LGBT advocacy group that filed an unsuccessful legal challenge to end religious exemptions to federal Title IX discrimination law for Christian colleges that receive federal funding is closing down.
The board of directors for the Religious Exemption Accountability Project emailed an update to supporters on Sunday to announce that they are closing the organization’s operations, citing “a serious internal issue” that affected its “financial and operational stability.”
“While we cannot share all details publicly, we are deeply grateful to the founders, students, alumni, volunteers, donors, and community who believed in this work from day one,” stated REAP.
“Founded as a legal and storytelling campaign by queer students and alumni, REAP grew into a national nonprofit advocating for LGBTQIA+ students at religious colleges and universities.”
The group will “remain incorporated solely to conclude operations, fulfill legal obligations, and preserve our archive.”
In March 2021, REAP filed a lawsuit on behalf of over 30 LGBT-identified current and former students who believe they were discriminated against by over 20 religious colleges.
Filed against the U.S. Department of Education and other defendants, the complaint sought to eliminate the religious exemption given to Christian academic institutions under Title IX federal civil rights law, which bars discrimination based on sex for any educational institution that receives federal funding.
The lead plaintiff, Elizabeth Hunter, was a former student at Bob Jones University in South Carolina who alleged that school officials harassed her because of her sexual orientation.
Hunter had also taken issue with the student handbook detailing behavioral rules prohibiting same-sex romantic relationships, claiming that BJU created a “scary, harsh environment for me.”
Other plaintiffs attended institutions such as Baylor University in Texas, Union University in Tennessee, Fuller Theological Seminary in California and Azusa Pacific University in California, among others.
The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities filed a motion to intervene in the legal challenge, saying that the schools “are transparent about their policies and behavior guidelines, which students voluntarily agree to when they choose to attend the institution.”
CCCU said eliminating the religious exemption to Title IX would present an “existential threat to religious higher education” and “deprive religious colleges of the oxygen that gives them life by forbidding them, on pain of losing federal assistance for their students, from teaching and expecting adherence to their core religious beliefs.”
In January 2023, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Oregon, a Clinton appointee, ruled against the plaintiffs, concluding that they failed to prove that the original exemption granted by Congress to religious colleges decades ago for Title IX was discriminatory.
“Plaintiffs have submitted no allegations of discriminatory motivation on the part of those enacting the religious exemption. To the contrary, Plaintiffs argue that when Congress enacted Title IX, protections for — or discrimination against sexual and gender minorities — were ‘of no concern,'” wrote Aiken.
“Plaintiffs provide no evidence and supply no allegations involving the above-listed factors for the Court to consider and evaluate whether Congress was motivated in part by a discriminatory purpose when it enacted the religious exemption.”
In late August of last year, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled against the lawsuit, with Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr., a George W. Bush appointee, authoring the panel opinion.
Smith wrote at the time that there is “a continuous, century-long practice of governmental accommodations for religion that the Supreme Court and our court have repeatedly accepted as consistent with the Establishment Clause.”
“Here, when a school claims an exemption, the Department must make two determinations — whether the school is controlled by a religious organization and whether Title IX would conflict with the religious tenets of the controlling organization,” wrote Smith.
“We are not persuaded that this type of facially neutral religious accommodation violates the Establishment Clause.”
In a statement released at the time, REAP vowed to fight on, declaring that “we cannot simply rely on the courts to protect the rights and well-being of LGBTQIA+ students at religious schools but must use every tool at our disposal to expose the harms they experience and push for change.”
“Although this is not the result we wanted to see, we will not give up. In times like these we must turn our eyes even more so to those who are harmed by this ruling,” they added.
