Another Religious Exemption Withdrawn

Another university (see this earlier post) has formally distanced itself from an earlier request for a religious exemption under Title IX. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Loyola University of New Orleans has written to the Department of Education to ensure that the agency no longer considers it among the institutions that have historically or recently exercised their statutory right to opt out of Title IX provisions that conflict with religious tenets.

In Loyola's exemption request, which it filed in 1986, the institution affirmed that regulatory obligations to include "termination of pregnancy or recovery therefrom" in its student health insurance plans conflicted with its Catholic tenets opposed to abortion. Today, however, the institution no longer offers a student health insurance plan, so the exemption is no longer necessary.

As the Chronicle's article points out, there was no legal reason for the institution to formally disclaim an exemption that only pertains to an obsolete program. Thus, the purpose of the letter seems to be entirely a matter of public relations. As religious institutions have lately rushed to claim exemptions that would permit them to discriminate against LGBT students, the list of religiously-exempt institutions has acquired a certain degree of notoriety. Loyola, like Pepperdine, looks to be going out of its way to distance itself from the other institutions on the list.