We’re Demanding Answers: Did Biden’s Department of Education Target Christian Colleges?

Christian education has always been about more than academics. It is the transmission of truth – the formation of young men and women shaped by faith, equipped with moral conviction, and sent into the world to serve their communities and glorify God. For generations, faith-based colleges and universities have done this sacred work faithfully, producing graduates of character when much of higher education intentionally abandons that mission entirely. Many are overtly hostile. Even still, there are Christian universities that are staying the course, faithful to their mission.

That is why what the Biden Administration’s Department of Education (DOE) appears to have done to these institutions is so deeply troubling – and why the ACLJ is preparing to fight back. And to fight back, we must expose what happened.

Take action with us. Sign our petition: Defeat the Left’s War Against Christians.

The ACLJ has filed a formal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the DOE, demanding records that will reveal whether the Department’s Office of Enforcement systematically targeted faith-based colleges – particularly those in Virginia – while ignoring comparable misconduct at elite secular institutions.

The numbers paint a damning picture. A landmark report by the American Principles Project analyzed enforcement data that the DOE was finally compelled to release in 2024 – and what it found should alarm every American who cares about religious freedom. Of the 87 enforcement actions taken by the Office of Enforcement since its relaunch in 2021, approximately 70% were directed against faith-based or career-education schools. Yet these institutions collectively serve fewer than 10% of college students nationwide. Meanwhile, not a single Ivy League institution – not one – faced any enforcement action.

Let that sink in. This is not an isolated incident. It’s a pattern. And patterns demand answers.

That is precisely why we filed this FOIA request. The ACLJ is demanding that the Department of Enforcement produce complete records of its enforcement actions against Virginia institutions, the criteria used to select schools for investigation, the methodology behind its penalty calculations, and the complaint data for every higher education institution in the Commonwealth. We want the public record to show – in black and white – whether Christian colleges and universities were subjected to a different, harsher standard of scrutiny than their secular counterparts.

The American people deserve to know.

Leftists, socialists, and Marxists cannot stomach Christianity and a Christian’s fealty to a higher power than themselves. They fear the power of the individual’s conscience. Of course, they target institutions of learning and the younger, developing minds.

In a general sense, the problem is not regulation, but rather, discriminatory regulation – being targeted because one is Christian. Christian universities deserve to be held to the same standards as every other school – not singled out for aggressive investigation and record-breaking fines. When the government weaponizes its enforcement power against institutions of faith, it doesn’t just threaten those schools. It threatens every student who chooses a Christian education because they want their faith and academic formation to be integrated.

That is a vision of education worth defending.

The ACLJ has stood for religious liberty in courtrooms for decades. We will not stand by while the government bureaucracy is turned against schools that dare to teach that there is a God and that truth matters.

We are demanding transparency. We are demanding accountability. Take action with us. Sign our petition: Defeat the Left’s War Against Christians.