College of the Ozarks in Hollister, Missouri is suing the Biden administration over a directive from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development forcing religious institutions to permit students of the opposite sex in the same bathrooms, dorm rooms, and dormitories.
The White House announced in February that “it will administer and enforce the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Religious liberty legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit on behalf of the Missouri college, asserting Biden’s decision “requires private religious colleges to place biological males into female dormitories and assign them as females’ roommates.”
“The government cannot and should not force schools to open girls’ dorms to males based on its politically motivated and inappropriate redefinition of ‘sex,’” attorney Marie Blake said.
Blake said women shouldn’t be forced to share showers and dorm rooms with males.
“Religious schools shouldn’t be punished simply because of their beliefs about marriage and biological sex. Government overreach by the Biden administration continues to victimize women, girls, and people of faith by gutting their legal protections, and it must be stopped,” she said.
Currently, College of the Ozarks has separate dormitories for male and female students. This upcoming fall, the college is regardless planning to separate students by their biological sex, which they believe cannot be altered.
“Religious freedom is under attack in America, and we won’t stand on the sidelines and watch,” the president of the school, Dr. Jerry Davis said. “To threaten religious freedom is to threaten America itself. College of the Ozarks will not allow politicians to erode the essential American right or the ideals that shaped America’s founding.”
The Christian liberal arts college has faced scrutiny from the left in the past. Left-wing outlets took major issue with College of the Ozark’s 2017 decision to require all freshmen to enroll in a “Patriotic Education and Fitness” course to inform students on the military, politics, and flag procedures. Also in 2017, the college announced it will not compete against other universities’ athletic programs that do not stand for the national anthem.
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to involve “sex” in the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act protects people from discrimination in any housing-related activities, though now means “[l]imit[ing] privileges, services or facilities of a dwelling” based on arbitrary leftist gender theory is discriminatory.
