Moody pushes against Biden for threat against protecting religious student groups
WASHINGTON, D.C. (FLV) – Attorney General Ashley Moody pushed back against the Biden administration after they threatened to revoke a provision put in place to protect religious groups on campuses nationwide.
Moody, along with 21 other state attorneys general, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education, demanding it retain a provision that compels public universities to comply with the First Amendment or lose grant funding.
“Public universities should not be able to pick and choose who has First Amendment protection under our U.S. Constitution,” Moody said.
“These fundamental rights must be vigorously defended. We demand the Biden administration halt efforts by the U.S. Department of Education to remove protections put in place to ensure student religious groups can practice their faith at our public universities.”
The letter said, “The religious practice of student groups and individuals is under immense fire at universities…Religious students have greatly enriched campus communities, through charity, service, temperance, and commitment to learning. They are owed the right to freely exercise their religion, however out of fashion with an increasingly anti-religious bureaucratic regime that might be.”
“The department is blessing the targeting of religious groups…That is wrong,” it said.
In September 2021, the Department of Education announced it was conducting a review of regulations related to First Amendment freedoms, including religious freedoms, which impose additional requirements on its higher education institutional grant recipients.
Friday, after its review, the department issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, proposing to rescind a portion of the regulation related to religious student organizations.
The existing rule, established in 2020 to implement U.S. Supreme Court precedent, prohibits public universities from denying student religious groups “any right, benefit or privilege that is otherwise afforded to other student organizations at the public institution” because of a group’s “beliefs, practices, policies, speech, membership standards or leadership standards, which are informed by sincerely held religious beliefs.”
The department said they believe “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.”
Moody argued that removing the rule would conflict with U.S. Supreme Court rulings forbidding the government from weaponization against religion.
The attorney general also argued the rule change would impose “irreparable harm to students for no federal benefit.”
Moody was joined by the attorney generals of the following states in signing the letter sent Friday: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
