SW News: An important member of the former Trump administration's State Department has cautioned that if a proposal from the Biden administration is implemented by the Department of Education, it will have a negative effect on religious freedom and how religious student organizations are treated at public colleges.

Sam Brownback, who under former President Donald Trump served as the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, criticized the US Department of Education's intentions to revoke a rule that makes it simpler for faith-based student organizations at public colleges to make claims of discrimination based on their religious beliefs.

Republican Sam Brownback, a former governor of Kansas and US senator, warned that the Biden administration's proposal disregards the First Amendment rights of religious clubs, despite the fact that many have recently encountered resistance from campus administrations to receive official recognition.

“The regulations have caused confusion among institutions, are not necessary to protect the First Amendment rights to free speech and the exercise of religion, and prescribe an overly burdensome role for the Department to investigate claims regarding how Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) treat religious student organizations. This is why the Department is proposing to repeal the regulations,” the proposal said.

The regulation that the government is attempting to repeal went into effect in 2020, towards the end of the Trump presidency. The "free inquiry rule" is the name given to the policy. Higher education institutions that disobeyed the rule risked losing federal funding.

In a Fox News op-ed, Brownback used the University of Iowa's Business Leaders in Christ student organization as an illustration of a religious student organization that had to engage in costly litigation to defend its right to exist on a public college campus in the absence of the "free inquiry rule." InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Ratio Christi are two such Christian organizations that have taken legal action in response to administrative opposition to their requests for campus status or university support.

The proposed elimination of the free inquiry provision, in his words, is an illustration of the Biden administration's lack of interest in defending religious freedom at educational institutions in the United States.

On February 22, the concerned proposal was released in the Federal Register. The window for public comments closes on Friday. Around 32,000 comments had already been sent as of Tuesday morning.