That's about to change. Responding to a request from lawmakers including US Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, the US Department of Education said today it'll make it easy to identify what schools are hoping to discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. In a letter to Wyden, Merkley, and six other Democratic senators, Assistant Education Secretary Catherine Lhamon said the department will create an online search tool "so that applicants, students, parents and others an be better informed about which educational institutions have sought and/or received" exemptions to Title IX, the federal law banning discrimination on the basis of sex.
As we reported last month, Portland's tiny Multnomah University is one of a growing number of institutions around the country requesting an exemption built into Title IX that permits discrimination if not discriminating would violate the tenets of their faith. (Multnomah's president has groused that the feds are being "selective" in handing out those exemptions.) The exemption's been in the law since it passed in 1972, but it's become increasingly popular since George Fox University in Newberg cited it to discriminate against a transgender student in 2014.
Minnesota LGBT-advocacy site the Column detailed all the recent exemption requests in a December story, relying on a public records requests to do so. Now such public records requests won't be necessary. Both a university's petition for an exemption and the Department of Education's response will be posted online.
The change, as I mentioned, was spurred by a December letter asking for more transparency. We reported on the letter here.
Wyden's office issued a release about the change this afternoon, in which the senator said: "The Department’s decision to create greater transparency in the Title IX exemption process is a welcome move toward helping all students and parents make informed decisions about how they will invest their higher education dollars."
The release also included a quote from Chad Griffin, President of the Human Rights Campaign. “We have been alarmed by the growing trend of schools quietly seeking the right to discriminate against LGBT students, and not disclosing that information publicly,” Griffin said. "We are encouraged that the Department of Education is answering our call for greater transparency to help ensure no student unknowingly enrolls in a school that intends to discriminate against them.
