(NAME-MCE) Virginia Colleges Told Not to Ban Anti-Gay Discrimination

[Anselmo Villanueva]

 March 4, 2010

Virginia Colleges Told Not to Ban Anti-Gay Discrimination

Virginia's attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, last week sent a
letter to the leaders of public colleges and universities, telling them that
they lack the authority to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation.
In the letter, Cuccinelli says that only the General Assembly can ban
discrimination based on sexual orientation, and that college policies doing
so "create, at a minimum, confusion about the law and, at worst, a litany of
instances in which the school's operation would need to change in order to
come into conformance." The attorney general did not release the letter and
his office declined to comment on it, but *The Washington Post *obtained a
copy <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/Cuccinelli.pdf> and wrote
about it. The attorney general's stance could create problems for many
colleges in Virginia because they do in fact include sexual orientation
among characteristics on which they bar bias. And in many states with
legislatures that have not barred such bias, public colleges have done so.
Among the Virginia colleges with policies that run afoul of the attorney
general's thinking are the College of William and
Mary<http://www.wm.edu/offices/eo/discrimination/index.php>,
George Mason University <http://equity.gmu.edu/> and the University of
Virginia. <http://www.virginia.edu/eop/EEOAAStatement.html> Officials of all
three colleges declined to discuss Cuccinelli's letter. The Virginia branch
of the American Civil Liberties Union issued a
statement<http://acluva.org/4887/aclu-tells-state-colleges-to-protect-gays-and-lesbians-despite-ag%e2%80%99s-stand-against-non-discrimination-policies/>saying
that the attorney general was overstepping his authority and calling
on the colleges to keep their anti-bias policies as they are.

Letter from Kenneth Cuccinelli:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/Cuccinelli.pdf