Bob Jones University regains nonprofit status

Bob Jones University (BJU) announced Wednesday it is regaining its federal tax-exempt status on March 1. The university lost its nonprofit status more than three decades ago following a landmark 1983 Supreme Court ruling that condemned the Greenville, S.C., school’s policy forbidding interracial dating or marriage among its students, staff, and faculty. During a nationally televised interview on CNN’s Larry King Live in 2000, the school’s president at the time, Bob Jones III, announced BJU would drop the policy. In 2008, then-President Stephen Jones publicly apologized for past racial discrimination. In the announcement Wednesday night, current President Steve Pettit said the school’s previous policy was a social issue and was not Biblical: “The Bible is very clear. We are made of one blood.” The change from for-profit to nonprofit, which the school had sought since 2014, will allow tax-deductible gifts from donors to the university and its capital campaigns.