The Daily Signal - Christian College Fights Biden Directive That Allows Men to Live In Women's Dorms

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

A small Missouri college is taking the Biden administration to court over a directive that allows biological men who "identify” as women to live in female-only dormitories.   The College of the Ozarks, a Christian school with just over 1,500 students, filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration in April after the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a directive requiring colleges and universities to open dorm rooms and other sex-specific spaces to individuals of the opposite sex. The directive came after President Joe Biden issued his “Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.”  “We're seeing an example that from our point of view is out of touch with reality,” Dr. Jerry Davis, president of the College of the Ozarks in Point Outlook, Missouri, said of the directive. He added that the order will “do irreparable harm to a school like this. And it seems to me that somebody is going to have to stand up and say what this really is … . It's an overreach [of government].”  The College of the Ozarks is represented by the Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom. Davis and Ryan Bangert, Alliance Defending Freedom attorney, join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the lawsuit and the broader implications of the case.  We also cover these stories:  The Senate Rules Committee marks up the Democrat-backed voter legislation known as “The For the People Act.” Demand for gasoline skyrockets after a ransomware attack on Coastal Pipeline. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announces that public colleges and universities will require proof of vaccination against COVID-19 for all students returning to campus.  Enjoy the show!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, May 12th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. Biological men have been given an avenue to live in women-only dorm rooms under a new Biden administration directive. On today's show, Virginia Allen talks with the president of the College of the Ozarks, Dr. Jerry Davis, an Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Ryan Bangert, about a lawsuit they have filed against the Biden administration. The suit aims to keep biological males who identify as female. from being allowed to live in women-only dormitories on college and prep schools campuses.

And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. The Senate Rules Committee is marking up the Democrat pushed voter legislation called the For the People Act. The legislation would prohibit voter ID laws, expand ballot harvesting, as well as same-day registration, publicly financed elections, restrictions on updating voter registration rules, and creating a partisan makeup for the Federal Elections Commission. In prepared remarks to the Senate Rules Committee, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

said popular safeguards like voter ID would be neutered with the For the People Act. He added, ludicrous practices like ballot harvesting would be made mandatory coast to coast. Democrats have a narrow majority in the House and a 50-50 Senate. but they want to make themselves the Board of Elections for every county and state in America. Voting regulations are just the start. This legislation would deliberately turn the Federal Elections Commission into a partisan Democrat panel. They want their own side enforcing election law on their own unilaterally. In a Tuesday tweet, New York Senator Chuck Schumer said,

Republican legislatures have seized on Donald Trump's big lie to make it harder for Americans to vote. Today in the Rules Committee markup, we're moving forward with the For the People Act for democracy. Here is what Texas Senator Ted Cruz had to say about the legislation. In addition to being the Corrupt Politicians Act is also the welfare for politicians act. Because this bill creates a matching program for politicians, not just an even matching program, a six-to-one matching program of federal funds flooding into federal elections because The Democrats, by the way, the narrowest majority possible in a 50-50 Senate has deemed that billions of dollars of federal funds need to flow into funding their campaigns. How would this operate in effect? Well, I looked at the quarterly reports from each of the members of this committee and what it would mean in practice, the chairwoman,

Senator Klobuchar would have received $6.9 million in federal funds for last quarter. Senator Feinstein would have received $906. Senator Schumer would have received slightly over a million dollars. Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci clashed during a Senate hearing Tuesday over a National Institute of Health Funding for a lab in Wuhan, China, that some believe may have played a role in the initial spread of the coronavirus. Paul confronted Fauci over theories that the Wuhan Institute of Virology created COVID-19 and either intentionally or accidentally let it escape the lab.

Paul also pressed Fauci on gain of function research, which involves modifying the genomes of a virus to give it new properties, such as the ability to infect a new host species or transmit from one host to another more easily, as defined by a Washington Post editorial. Here's a portion of the confrontation per Senator Paul's YouTube channel. Dr. Fauci, do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan? Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute. Do they fund Dr. Barrack?

We do not fund. Do you fund Dr. Barracks' gain of function research? research? Dr. Barrett does not doing gain of function research, and if it is, it's according to the guidelines, and it is being conducted in North Carolina, not in China. You don't think inserting a bad virus spike protein that he got from the Wuhan Institute into the SARS virus's gain of function. That is not. You would be in the minority because at least 200 scientists have signed a statement from the Cambridge Working Group saying that it is gain of function. Well, it is not. Government scientists like yourself who favor gain of function research in China,

you are saying things that are not correct. Fauci and Paul have sparred numerous times during the course of the pandemic on a wide range of issues, including the efficacy of lockdown measures and mask mandates, as well as herd immunity. Demand for gasoline is skyrocketing after the coastal pipeline was hacked by a criminal organization called Darkside. per reporting from CNN on Tuesday, 7.6% of the gas stations in Virginia and 5.8% in North Carolina didn't have gas, and outages are also being reported in Georgia, South Carolina, in Florida. On Tuesday, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced he has temporarily suspending the state's gas tax to help Georgians with the skyrocketing gas prices. In a tweet, Kemp said, today I signed an executive order suspending the gas tax in Georgia to help with higher price. as a result of the colonial cyber attack. We are working closely with colonial and expect for them to recover by the end of the week.

During a press conference Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced public colleges and universities would require proof of vaccination against COVID-19 from all students returning to campus. He also encouraged private schools to adopt the same requirements, though he stopped short of requiring them to do so. Here's Cuomo making the announcement via NBC News. Today, no excuses. SUNY and CUNY boards will require vaccinations for all in-person students coming back to school in the fall. You're a young person. You go to a SUNY school, State University of New York, City University of New York. You must have a vaccine to come back in September.

If you must have a vaccine, get it now. The governor said that the mandate is intended to encourage more people to take the vaccine, as vaccination rates have become to decline in recent weeks. Now stay tuned for Virginia Allen's conversation with the president of the College of the Ozarks, Dr. Jerry Davis, and Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Ryan Bangerd, as they discuss a lawsuit to keep biological men out of women's only spaces on college campuses. We're all guilty of it, spending too much time watching silly videos on the internet. But it's 2021. Maybe it's time for a change. At the Heritage Foundation YouTube channel, you'll find videos that both entertain and educate,

including virtual events featuring the biggest names in American politics, original explainers and documentaries, and heritage experts diving deep on topics like election integrity, China, and other threats to our democracy. All brought to you by the nation's most broad broadly supported Public Policy Research Institute. Start watching now at heritage.org slash YouTube. And don't forget to subscribe and share. I am so pleased to be joined by the president

of the College of the Ozarks, Dr. Jerry Davis, and Alliance Defending Freedom Attorney Ryan Banger. Thank you both so much for being here today. You're welcome. Today we're talking about a lawsuit that the College of the Ozarks has filed against the Biden administration. But before we get into the details of that suit, Dr. Davis, I would love just to ask you to share a little bit about the College of the Ozarks.

What is your mission at the university? Well, the mission has never changed, and that is to provide a Christian education, especially for students who are without financial means. And we've honored that for over 100 years. The environment here is in many ways different. from any other college. We have a daycare center program. We have a grade school. We have a high school, and then the four-year college. The grade school and high school operate as classical Christian schools. And so the kids there meet the same requirements that the college has. That is, 90% of the entering students must show financial need. So, Obviously, we have many more applicants than we can take.

We have a program in patriotic education here, which is unusual for college. The usual academic programs. We have vocational goal, which is a mandatory work program. Students all work 15 hours a week and 2.40 hour work weeks. and they do not have to pay tuition. And the same philosophy is followed in the high school. So we're quite different in many ways. It is a distinctively Christian institution.

We take our faith commitment seriously. And then we have a cultural goal. So there are five goals here, but as a whole, whole the goal of the college is to develop citizens of Christ-like character who are well-educated, hardworking, and patriotic. This is done within a traditional environment by that. I mean that students are require have requirements here that most colleges used to have, but they've dropped them. We have required Sunday service. They take military science as a part of the patriotic education program.

So it's quite different, but very meaningful. And our graduation rate here is higher than most colleges like us. Wow. You're located in Missouri. How many students do you have in the university? We have 1,500 students roughly in the college, and about 300 in the lab school, which is called school. school of the Ozarks. Okay, wonderful. Thank you for sharing that background. So in mid-April, the college

filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, and the lawsuit is in response to a directive from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that requires colleges and universities to open dormitories and other sex-specific spaces to individuals of the opposite sex. And this directive came after Biden's January, executive order titled Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the basis of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation. Mr. Banger, could you just explain why the Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued this directive, which requires colleges to allow, for example, biological men to now be able to live in a female dorm room if they identify as a woman? Thanks, Virginia. And, you know, this directive that was issued by Housing and Urban Development

Department is just another example of extreme government overreach. And overreach in the service of promoting a radical ideology that the majority of people in this country would not support or endorse. And the reason we filed this lawsuit was because the HUD directive directly impacts schools like College of the Ozarks, schools that are religious in nature that have a historic mission of training their students to live lives that are consistent with religious faith. And as part of that, these schools have historically separated their dorms by sex. That's just part of the living out of the creed that these schools like College of the Ozark embrace. And this directive would have forced these schools to admit biological males to female dorms anytime,

biological males identified as female, as transgender. And that's just the working out of a very radical ideology that's being rammed through by the administrative state. And I think you've seen Biden do this over and over again throughout the first 100-plus days of his administration. He realizes that large portions of his agenda are not popular with the American people. And so he is using the administrative state to force that agenda on the people without even affording notice and comment opportunities to the public to speak into that process as the law requires. So, Dr. Davis, why did you decide that this was a fight that the College of the Ozarks needed to take on?

Why did you file this lawsuit? Well, I think, I think Ryan is correct. We're seeing an example that from our point of view, it's just, it's out of touch with the reality, if nothing else. It'll do irreparable harm to a school like this. And it seems to me that somebody is going to have to stand up and say what this really is, which is what Ryan said. It's an overreach. they don't even go by apparently the government doesn't feel like it has to go by its own rules i mean they didn't have any serving of notice and input uh at least i don't know anything about that

so that's what they do and then my understanding is if we don't do what they say we should do then we're to be punished uh in fact because of our uh uh uh uh expectations which are religious and basis. So I don't think we had any choice. And we've gotten a lot of feedback from individuals by the thousands all over the United States. And I don't believe you can sell this anywhere, really. You might do it on the, on the,

where the coastal elites live that have lost touch with the average person. But in this part of America, they would just view this is just plain crazy. Dr. Davis, as you've said, the College of the Ozarks is a Christian school. So how do the religious beliefs of the university play into your decision to file this lawsuit? Well, first of all, it is a pervasively religious college. Students are required to take two courses in Christian worldview.

And of course, a Christian worldview is based in the Bible. And we believe the Bible is clear. that one man was created in one woman. And just because 200 or so years after our founding, some bunch of zealots have decided to rewrite not only our history, but redefine sex, we don't think that's right. So it's bumping up against our sincerely held religious convictions, which, you know, there is this quaint. It's getting that away.

First Amendment that talks about freedom of religion. And so the College of Ozarks has every right to practice its religious faith. After all, we live in America. We don't live in North Korea or Cuba or China somewhere like that. And so we need to take these things seriously. And the public needs to wake up before it's gone so far

that it'll take a stronger organization. organization to stop it. Yeah, this is an issue that I think concerns many, many Americans all across the nation. Mr. Banger, I want to ask you, you know, Alliance Defending Freedom is on the forefront. You all have been on the forefront of so many critical cases defending religious freedom. In your mind, what is the significance of this case for, you know, for Christian colleges and universities, but also for boarding schools, for summer camps, for really any institution that has facilities that are separated by biological sex.

That's a great question, Virginia. And I think it's important to note that the Fair Housing Act, the statute that's at issue here, its application doesn't depend on receiving federal money. All it depends upon is whether or not you're providing a dwelling place, some sort of place to live that has permanent. And so that's why dormitories are at issue here. That's why dormitories are at stake. and that application can be very, very broad.

It can stretch beyond colleges and universities. And that's why this is important, because the rule as it was issued, was issued under the justification that we as a society need to ensure that everyone has a roof over their head. And no one disputes that proposition. No one disputes that principle. But that's not what's at stake here. What's at stake here is forcing religious institutions that historically have, taught that gender is binary, that there are two sexes, male and female, and they cannot be

changed. Forcing those institutions to disclaim that belief, to reject that fundamental belief that they have held for centuries, in many cases, in millennia, in the case of the Catholic Church, this is an effort by the government to rewrite that history and to do so by government fiat, by dictat in the service of an ideology that, I mean, really a lot of, of this goes back to critical theory. We're trying to tear down these institutions, tear down these longstanding beliefs in the service of recreating something new. And this is all being foisted on us by an administrative state that is not being accountable to the people, that is not going through, not even following its own laws, rules, and regulations.

And that's the objection that we have here, that if the government had simply followed its own rules and regulations, it would have known that this hasty, ill-conceived law is trampling on religious freedoms and religious beliefs that are centuries in millennia in making. And so that's a real problem, and that's an abuse of the administrative state. And moreover, in the process of not following their own rules, the government is trampling on religious freedom of all the institutions that you mentioned, that in particular, schools and universities. And so that's why this case is important. So under this directive, if, you know, at the College of the Ozarks or any other Christian university, if a male student

says, you know, actually I identify as a woman and I want to live in the female dorm and the college says no, what is at risk? Well, it's a directive. I think that it's very clear this is just a opinion by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In fact, President Bob called it a rule change. So even this administration recognizes this what's happening here is new and different. And what the direct agency in the federal government that it complies to say, alleging discrimination against gender in a example, if a to identify female, asks for access to the female dorm.

That could be characterized as an act of gender identity and discrimination. That student could complain to the element or even to a state enforcement agency and complain about this act, say this is discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The directive tells those enforcing agencies, you have to receive that complaint.

You need to actually investigate that. complaint. And if you find that discrimination has occurred, you need to bring charges based with the complaint. So it has very real implication. One follow-up question to that, Mr. Ben-Gert. Under the directive, if a biological male says that he's female, does he have to take any steps to show that he's actually transgender? Or can he simply, you know, wake up one morning, say I'm a woman, and I want to live in the women's dorm? Well, you might be surprised at that the directive is completely silent on that issue, and not surprising, actually, because this directive was issued that this in common. No forethought seems to have been given to it.

And so, no, the directive is completely silent on that question. And I think that's a good question because it just points out the hasty and ill-conceived way that this thing appears to have just been thrown together within the first 30 days of the Biden administration in response to an executive order that was penned on day one. Dr. Davis, what are you hearing from students at your school on this issue? What are their thoughts on this? I've had students send me notes or stop me on campus and ask me about this case. I had a note from a parent who was distraught.

She said, I will do everything in my power to fight this. And then a student sent a note over and she said, I'm scared. Is it going to be okay? What's the government trying to do here? I mean, we're helping students who have great financial need. And everybody says you should try to help that kind of student. But something like this will just do irreparable harm because their parents are not going to put up with it. They're going to take them out of college.

they probably came forward to go anywhere else or they won't go. So I mean, you're harming people that I would assume even this administration says we should help. Yeah. Not just with the money that we got to borrow from somewhere else to give them, but we're harming because we're going to interfere with their education. Their parents won't go for it. I don't think the students will go for it. I don't know anybody around here that thinks this is a good idea. Most people just kind of roll their eyes and say, some nut over in Washington's come up with something else we have to deal with. And so there it is. So I think students trust the college to do the right thing.

We've told them that we will. We will. Yeah. Dr. Davis, what would be your response to, you know, a transgender student, or someone who was asking on behalf of a transgender student who says, you know, you're discriminating against them by trying to keep them out of the dormitories of the gender that they identify with? I'd probably suggest, you know, you need to read the handbook because all colleges are different. Religious colleges of different persuasions have different expectations. And we're entitled to ours. I wouldn't have any way of knowing what somebody is when they come in here to see.

I mean, we don't get into that. But everybody here signs a compliance form where they agree, whether they like it or not, to live in accordance and to respect the college's conditions for admission. And it's quite detailed. And they signed their name to that. And we haven't had this problem. I think most students would be truthful here anyway. So I think anybody who's sending a child to college should read the handbook, and ours is very clear.

Mr. Bangor, ultimately, what do you hope that the result of this case is? What do you want the Department of Housing and Urban Development to do to protect the rights of all students? Well, Virginia, first off, we're asking the court to tell the department that it can't enforce this directive. That's our initial objective here. And we've asked the court to do that. We have a hearing coming up on May 19th, and we're hopeful that we can have a good result there. But at the end of the day, the department needs to pull this thing back because it was issued in a way that doesn't comply with federal law. It was issued in a way that tramples on religious freedom.

If the department wants to take another stab at this in a way that's going to be consistent with the rights of the College of the Ozarks, they're free to do so. But they need to follow the law, and they need to do it the right way. And that didn't happen here. Yeah. Really thank you both for your time and for joining the Daily Signal podcast today, so appreciate it. Thank you for asking. And that'll do it for today's episode.

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