The Trump administration released a report Thursday criticizing former President Joe Biden’s administration for alleged anti-Christian bias.
The report accused Biden’s Education Department of focusing its enforcement actions against Christian universities, but it did not mention President Donald Trump’s ties to these schools or that some of these efforts started during the first Trump administration.
The Biden administration also allegedly failed to address parental concerns over school curriculum and programming and enforced definitions of gender identity and sexual identity under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination, that conflicted with Christian beliefs, the report said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon bashed the Biden administration, saying in a statement it “abused its authority by unfairly punishing Christian families and schools.”
“Every American deserves equal treatment under the law, but we continue to discover the magnitude of the Biden Administration’s gross iniquities and flagrant violations of religious liberty—particularly targeting Christians,” she said.
A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment.
But Catherine Lhamon, former assistant Education secretary for civil rights under the Biden administration, told POLITICO there was no "animus involved" in the administration's development of its Title IX regulations.
"I can guarantee that there was no religious discrimination that operated to infect any of our investigations," she said.
Here are some of those allegations:
Enforcement targeting Christian universities
The Trump administration’s report accused the Biden administration of targeting Christian colleges, pointing to the unprecedented fines levied against Liberty University — a prominent evangelical institution that had a close relationship to Trump during his first term — and Grand Canyon University, which has had a tumultuous relationship with the Education Department since the first Trump administration.
Liberty University was slapped with a $14 million fine by the Biden administration in 2024 for its treatment of sexual assault survivors and its failure to disclose information about crimes on and near campuses between 2016 and 2022. It is considered to be the largest fine for a violation of the Clery Act, which requires colleges receiving federal aid to collect campus crime data.
The report argues that the Christian university faced much harsher penalties than in the high-profile cases of Michigan State University's Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually assaulting athletes, and Pennsylvania State University football coach Jerry Sandusky’s conviction of serial child molestation. Michigan received a $4.5 million fine, while Pennsylvania was fined $2.4 million. The fine over Nassar was determined by the first Trump administration, and the Sandusky fine was imposed in the final months of the Obama administration.
The report also highlights enforcement actions against Grand Canyon University, including the Biden administration’s $37.7 million fine against the school. Biden administration officials also sued the institution for allegedly deceiving prospective doctoral students about the cost and course requirements of its doctoral programs and about the school’s nonprofit status.
But the battle over the school’s nonprofit status started in 2019 under the first Trump administration.
Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos denied the university’s request to convert from a for-profit institution to a nonprofit, arguing at the time the school was too financially entangled with a publicly traded corporation, Grand Canyon Education, Inc.
The department’s rejection at the time was unusual, as it had generally been more permissive about approving for-profit college requests to convert to nonprofits. For-profit colleges were subject to tougher regulatory requirements to receive aid than nonprofits.
Ultimately, the second Trump administration recognized the university as a nonprofit last year, the Education Department dismissed the fine and Federal Trade Commission officials tossed out a consumer protection lawsuit the Biden administration had lodged against the university for allegedly using misleading advertising practices.
The White House and schools could not be immediately reached for comment.
Definitions of sex and gender identity under Title IX
The report also took aim at the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX regulation, which sought to boost discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students. But Biden’s effort to codify new protections for transgender students impacted Christian schools, the report argues.
During that time, the guidance allegedly made cisgender students uncomfortable by allowing schools to have policies that opened restrooms and locker rooms to their trans peers as well as allowing trans athletes’ participation in women's sports. Such policies have become key targets in the agency’s current civil rights investigations into schools.
But Biden’s definition of sex discrimination was vacated by a federal court, and the Trump administration is expected to launch a new rulemaking to formally take the Biden regulation off the books.
"It's the job of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education to investigate whenever it has information that the law may have been violated," Lhamon said. "So if the Trump administration sincerely believes that the law may have been violated, it ought to be investigating that question."
Mishandling of parental rights and concerns
The report also details actions under the Biden administration that allegedly conflicted with the interests of Christian parents. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden’s Justice Department released the so-called Garland memo, a report criticized by Republican lawmakers for its characterization of parental opinions and behavior toward school district officials.
During the pandemic, school boards saw a spike in attendance and protests at meetings over concerns about curriculum on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The Biden administration also had planned to create a book ban coordinator position within the Education Department in response to an increase in book bans. The announcement came at a time when Christian parents had an increased interest in monitoring content on sexual identity and gender ideology, the report argues. The position was eventually eliminated to defer to “parental and community judgment.”
