Abby Davis, FISM News

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An appellate court ruled against a Christian college that had sued to block President Joe Biden’s executive order on transgender rights, citing concerns that it would force them to house men who identify as women in female housing.

As reported by Campus Reform, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit denied the College of the Ozarks’ (CofO) plea to block an executive order, saying the First Amendment would protect its gender-based housing policies as religious practices.

In January 2021, President Joe Biden issued the order directing federal agencies to rewrite policies to ban discrimination based on “gender identity or sexual orientation.”

This led the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to issue a memorandum stating that “the Fair Housing Act’s sex discrimination provisions are comparable to those of Title VII and that they likewise prohibit discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

CofO claimed this would infringe on their freedom of religion. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represented the Missouri private Christian college wrote, “A directive from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development forces religious schools to violate their beliefs by opening their dormitories, including dorm rooms and shared shower spaces, to members of the opposite sex.”

The court disagreed. Two of the three judges found that CofO failed to prove injury, meaning that, as of the ruling, no one had sued the college for its housing policies and that “the Memorandum does not require HUD to determine that the College’s housing policies violate federal law.”

The court further found that even if the school’s policies were challenged by this order, the policies would likely be protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty.

“In 2018, the assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education formally advised the College that it is exempt from numerous regulatory provisions on housing and other matters, insofar as they proscribed discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, to the extent that compliance would conflict with the College’s religious tenets,” read the majority opinion, which authored by Judge Steven Colloton and signed by Judge Jonathan Kobes.

Judge Steven Grasz dissented, writing: “regulated entities are placed under a sword of Damocles but are denied access to the courts because the sword has not yet fallen.” He also argued that HUD should have given the college notice and the opportunity to comment on the policy.

It is worth noting that all three judges were appointed by Republican presidents. Trump appointed Grasz and Kobes and included Bush-appointee Colloton on his list of potential Supreme Court candidates.

Campus Reform reported that both the University of Noth Dakota and the University of Toledo have proposed gender-inclusion mandates allowing biological males to be housed based on their “gender identity.”

Meanwhile, FISM News recently reported on an Iowa public schools policy that would allow students to bunk based on their gender identity on overnight trips.