"A Missouri Christian university is suing the Biden administration over a federal directive that its lawsuit claims requires religious schools to open their dormitories and showers based on "gender identity.”

The College of the Ozarks, a four-year liberal arts college in Point Lookout, filed a lawsuit in response to a February order from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that forces any entities that receive federal dollars covered by the Fair Housing Act to place transgender-identified biological males into female dormitories and assign them as females’ roommates. 

The lawsuit argues that the rule forces religious schools to violate their religious beliefs and states that the order was issued "without notice or the opportunity for public comment." The lawsuit contends that the policy was issued without considering alternative policies that "respect the interests of private religious colleges."

Representing the school is the legal nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, which argues that the directive violates both women's sex-based rights and the school's religious liberties. 

“The government cannot and should not force schools to open girls’ dorms to males based on its politically motivated and inappropriate redefinition of ‘sex,’” ADF senior counsel Julie Marie Blake said in a statement. 

“Women shouldn’t be forced to share private spaces — including showers and dorm rooms — with males, and 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.”

The federal order instructs “organizations and agencies that receive grants through HUD’s Fair Housing Initiative Program (FHIP), in carrying out activities under these grant agreements, must interpret sex discrimination under the Fair Housing Act to include discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

Violators of this directive will potentially face fines and punitive damages."

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