Biden wants to end protection for religious students on college campuses

The Biden administration is rescinding a Trump-era rule that withheld federal funding if schools restricted the speech of religious student groups. The Department of Education (DOE) announced action on Tuesday, opening the door for faith groups to lose permits for events, student government funding and access to college facilities for Christian speakers.

Former President Donald Trump signed the protection policy as part of an executive order in 2019. It prevented universities from censoring the speech of religious students on campus, according to the Washington Post. The DEO’s recent announcement indicates that President Joe Biden is looking to end the policy, claiming the religious and speech protections caused an “unduly burdensome role” for the department.

Robert Shibley writing for National Review magazine, says Supreme Court Justice Justice Samuel Alito believes faith on campus is under threat. Alito said in 2020 that religiously and politically conservative groups — which college administrators are typically against — would be targeted.

But, even with hundreds of documented incidents apparently overwhelming the DOE, the Biden administration is set to ignore the problem, say critics.

“[T]he Department believes it is not necessary in order to protect the First Amendment right to free speech and free exercise of religion given existing legal protections, it has caused confusion about schools’ nondiscrimination requirements, and it prescribed a novel and unduly burdensome role for the Department in investigating allegations regarding public institutions’ treatment of religious student organizations,” the announcement read. “We have not seen evidence that the regulation has provided meaningfully increased protection for religious student organizations beyond the robust First Amendment protections that already exist, much less that it has been necessary to ensure they are able to organize and operate on campus.”

“Groups like the Christian Legal Society, whose constitution required students to have traditional Christian beliefs (such as in Christ’s bodily resurrection) and morals (no sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage), could be required to remove those provisions from their constitutions and admit ‘all comers,’ or else face ‘derecognition’ and the corresponding loss of access to meeting space and other benefits that all other groups enjoyed,” Shelby writes.

The announcement came from Nassar H. Paydar, Assistant Secretary of Postsecondary Education, who explained that since September 2021 the DOE had been looking into current policies regarding the First Amendment that “impose additional requirements on its higher education institutional grant recipients.” Paydar noted that during that time, the DOE determined that the 2020 policy had placed a burden on the higher education system and did not provide any “meaningfully increased protection for religious student organizations.”

In 2020, Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told the Washington Post that the rule protects religious students from being “forced to choose between their faith and their education” and would also protect religious universities from being turned away for federal funding because of their religious affiliation.

The public comment phase will began on Wednesday, Feb. 22, and remain open for 30 days for anyone to comment and provide their thoughts on the proposal, according to the announcement.

–Wire services