I received about 250 pages (counting the pages that were fully blanked out as non responsive) from the Department of Education today. I’m still going through them, but I think this is the key page as far as Department policy on assessing the eligibility of an institution for religious exemptions (page 48 of the second file, 13-00442-F (OCR-PLG) (1 of 2)).
“The applicant or recipient will normally be considered to be controlled by a religious organization if one or more of the following conditions prevail:
- It is a school or department of divinity; or
- It requires its faculty, students, or employees to be members of, or otherwise espouse a personal belief in, the religion of the organization by which it claims to be controlled; or
- Its charter and catalog, or other official publication, contains explicit statement that it is controlled by a religious organization or an organ thereof or is committed to the doctrines of a particular religion, and the members of its governing body are appointed by the controlling religious organization or an organ thereof, and it receives a significant amount of financial support from the controlling religious organization or an organ thereof.”
The document is undated, but from the rest of the file is likely from the mid-1980s.