Liberty U sued for following doctrinal statement

A man who identifies as a woman filed a lawsuit last week against Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. The fired employee claims the school violated a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Legal experts have varying views on whether Liberty can combat the lawsuit on religious grounds.

Liberty, founded in 1971 by Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell Sr., is one of the largest Christian universities in the world with more than 135,000 students attending on campus and online. Zinski first started working at the school in February 2023 at the IT Helpdesk under the first name Jonathan. In July, Zinski notified Human Resources that he identified as a woman, had been undergoing hormonal treatment, and intended to change his name legally.

Zinksi claimed a month went by with little reply from HR. So the employee reached out again and Liberty officials scheduled a meeting in which they fired Zinski. The lawsuit states the officials made it “clear” that “employment was terminated because of [Zinski’s] transition.”

Officials said Zinski’s action went against the school’s employee doctrinal statement, which new employees must sign, according to the lawsuit. The statement explains that the “denial of birth sex by self-identification with a different gender” is a sin.

Now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit on Zinski’s behalf against the school. The ACLU claims that Liberty caused mental anguish and discriminated against its employee’s gender identity, violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII prohibits workplace discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. Zinski is seeking more than $300,000 in damages from the university and a trial by jury.

WORLD reached out to Liberty for comment on the lawsuit but did not hear back prior to publication.

While the text of Title VII doesn’t mention gender identity, the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that gender identity is included in the definition of “sex,” which the law does mention. The high court found in Bostock v. Clayton County that an employer who fires a worker for being gay or transgender violates Title VII rights. Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the opinion, contended that sexual orientation or gender identity discrimination are a part of sex discrimination.

The question of how far Title VII’s religious exemption protections extend is still being debated in courts across the country, said Greg Baylor, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom. The case against Liberty gives courts another chance to weigh in on this unsettled question.

Liberty can combat this through several defenses, Baylor said. First, the school needs to determine if Zinski’s complaints are fully true and accurate. If they are, Liberty can protect itself through a religious exemption under Title VII, Baylor added.

This exemption allows religious employers to fire employees if there is a disagreement of beliefs, said Brad Jacob, a constitutional law professor at Regent University School of Law.

Jacob anticipates that Liberty will claim the exemption, arguing it fired Zinski for religious reasons, citing its doctrinal statement as evidence that Zinski’s actions violated the university’s convictions.

The case will come down to whether courts will view Liberty’s actions as gender discrimination or a religious decision, Jacob noted.

Josh Blackman is a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston and a frequent contributor to the libertarian journal Reason. He said he expected that because Zinski worked in IT and had no religious duties, the court will find the school did not have grounds for a legal defense.

He said he suspects that “Liberty will make a big fuss about the religious liberty, but then they’ll settle the case quietly.”

In the wake of Bostock, numerous lawsuits in recent years have accused employers of discriminating against gender and sexual identities.

In 2023, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that a Catholic employer lawfully denied health benefits to the same-sex spouse of an employee because of the organization’s beliefs. The court found that because the employer discriminated against sexual identity rather than sex, a religious exemption applied to the situation.

That same year, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that a for-profit religious employer was exempt from federal rules that require businesses to hire LGBTQ employees who don’t abide by the employers’ religious beliefs about sexual conduct. 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jerry Smith said that employing someone who behaves in a manner that violates the company’s convictions “substantially burdens” the employer’s right to practice its beliefs.

“Religious organizations ought to have the [right] to draw their workforces from among those who share their religious convictions,” ADF’s Baylor said. “It's wrong for the government to force religious employers to retain employees who reject the employer’s religious teachings.”