Colleges Can't Ban LGBT Discrimination, Va. AG Says in Letter
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli sent a letter to state university presidents and board members last week stating that colleges lack the legal authority to ban sexual orientation discrimination on their campuses.
“It is my advice that the law and public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia prohibit a college or university from including ‘sexual orientation,’ ‘gender identity,’ ‘gender expression,’ or like classification as a protected class within its nondiscrimination policy absent specific authorization from the General Assembly,” Cuccinelli wrote.
The letter (PDF) was e-mailed to universities late Thursday and subsequently obtained by the Washington Post. Cuccinelli declined to comment on the letter when reached by the Post.
In the letter, Cuccinelli says such policies do not conform with Virginia’s law and public policy and states that the Virginia’s General Assembly has rejected adding sexual orientation to nondiscrimination statues more than 25 times since 1997.
Cuccinelli also said that including the classification “invites creative litigants to deem a university’s benign nondiscrimination statement to mandate, by contract, particular benefits or privileges to individuals.”
Virginia Tech President Charles Steger told the Roanoke Times that its nondiscrimination policy remains in effect, and that any change to it must be approved by its board, which is scheduled to meet later this month.
The Virginia chapter of the ACLU responded to Cuccinelli’s letter by sending its own missive to the same institutions, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. It advised that to allow sexual orientation discrimination would be unconstitutional.
