Liberty University has been sued by a former employee, who is alleging that the school engaged in employment discrimination by firing him after he notified Human Resources that he identified as a transgender woman. But legal experts say that the Constitution and court precedent protect religious institutions like Liberty to only staff employees who abide by a religious moral code.
The lawsuit was announced on Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia, who is representing the plaintiff Ellenor Zinski in the case. The lawsuit claims that Zinski, who was born a biological male named Jonathan, was “fired in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after she disclosed her identity as a trans woman.”
The ACLU lawsuit appears to rely on an interpretation of Title VII that is highly controversial. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII’s prohibition of employment discrimination based on “sex” also includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” But multiple recent court cases have upheld the rights of religious employers to require that their employees abide by sincerely held religious tenets. Liberty University is a private evangelical Christian university affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and states that the university abides by federal employment law that permits religious employers “to give employment preference to members of their own religion.”
Zinski was hired by Liberty in February 2023 as an IT Helpdesk apprentice. In July of that year, Zinski sent an email to the HR department stating that he “identified as a trans woman, had been undergoing hormone replacement therapy (‘HRT’), and intended to legally change her name from Jonathan to Ellenor soon.” As a result, Liberty terminated Zinski’s employment because his decision to identify as transgender conflicted with the university’s Doctrinal Statement that names “denial of birth sex by self-identification with a different gender” as a “sinful act prohibited by God.”
Zinski’s lawsuit in response to the termination is seeking $300,000 in compensatory and punitive “plus back-pay damages, with pre-judgment interest at the prevailing rate.” The suit additionally demands that Zinski be reinstated as well as “reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, including expert witness fees expended.”
But legal experts say that despite Zinski and the ACLU’s claims that Liberty engaged in discrimination, the university’s religious freedom rights are protected by the Constitution. Stephanie Taub, who serves as senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Tuesday to discuss the matter.
“[F]ortunately, the law gives a couple of very strong lines of defense for religious organizations,” she pointed out. “The first one is in the Constitution. And fortunately, we’ve had a couple of very good decisions from the United States Supreme Court that protects religious schools and their right to hire so-called ministers, or people that are responsible for teaching the faith to the next generation as a part of their religious school. And there’s also protections in federal employment discrimination law itself, which gives protections for religious employers to make employment decisions based on religion. But what we see here is we see radical organizations like the ACLU that are trying to chip away at the right of religious schools and especially Christian schools and their right to actually remain a community of faith that are dedicated to their doctrinal principles.”
Taub went on to note that “institutions like Liberty University require all of their employees to sincerely sign the doctrinal statement or agree to it. And if it was not agreed to in good faith, that would certainly be a very good defense for this organization.”
Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Education Studies, further argued that activist organizations on the Left are taking advantage of the Supreme Court’s Bostock decision to engage in lawfare against religious educational institutions.
“We have seen similar attacks on religious colleges and universities from groups like Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP),” she told The Washington Stand. “This group filed a lawsuit to strip religious institutions of higher learning of the ability to take federal student loans. After two years of expensive litigation, the case was dismissed. These kinds of efforts seem designed to expand the application of the Bostock decision (a case about employment) in ways that put LGBTQ+ affirmation on a collision course with religious liberties guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.”
Will this “collision course” force the Supreme Court to eventually take the issue up, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins asked Taub?
“Yes, absolutely,” she affirmed. “[C]ourts are expanding what a [piece of] civil rights legislation that was passed in 1964 actually means and suddenly it means something totally different. And so this … created a lot of open questions, especially when it comes to the intersection of the Bostock decision and religious liberty. So we’re continuing to see those pop up and we’re continuing to fight for religious liberty.”
Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.
