Will Bidens Obsession With Compromise Poison His Agenda on LGBTQ Rights?
After a somewhat obscure court filing in an anti-LGBTQ discrimination case, reported Tuesday by The Washington Post, the Biden administration is now facing serious doubts about how far it is willing to go in the fight for LGBTQ rights. The filing doesnt get into the facts or merits of the legal challenge, but early readings of its language around shared objectives between anti-LGBTQ religious schools and the administration have left media observers and LGBTQ rights groups trying to glean their arguments from it. And in an administration defined in part by fruitless efforts at compromise, figuring out where Biden stands on religious exemptions and LGBTQ rights is critical right now. The filing comes as part of a legal challenge, Hunter v. U.S. Department of Education, including 33 current and past students at Christian universities and colleges that receive federal funding, and which charges that the Department of Education has denied students anti-LGBTQ discrimination claims under Title IX. The U.S. Department of Education is duty-bound by Title IX and the U.S. Constitution to protect sexual and gender minority students at taxpayer-funded colleges and universities, including private and religious educational institutions that receive federal funding, the complaint states. The religious exemption to Title IX, however, seemingly permits the Department to breach its duty as to the more than 100,000 sexual and gender minority students attending religious colleges and universities where discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is codified in campus policies and openly practiced. It was filed in March 2021after Biden took office, amid debate over the Equality Act, sweeping federal legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation. A version of the law, passed in the House earlier this year, overrides the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a 1993 law that anchors many of the exemptions religious institutions presently use to work around anti-discrimination law. Republicans and anti-LGBTQ groups had seized on the question of religious exemptions, as well as escalating panic about trans youth, to thwart the Equality Acts progress in Congress. The House passed the Equality Act, and Biden says he supports the legislation, but its fate is uncertain, particularly given the platitudes to bipartisanship offered by Democrats. There is a real possibility that the Equality Act could be lost in debates over how to compromise with legislatorsby including religious exemptionswhose claim to protect religious freedom really means the freedom to discriminate. Many mainstream LGBTQ groups arent committed to fighting, said Paul Carlos Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, or REAP, when the group filed the students suit in March. We want to say: Dont negotiate us away. Dont bargain away these students, who are really being damaged with taxpayer money. Im worried they will be cut out of the Equality Act protection through negotiations.