University of Alabama quietly abandons sexual orientation & gender identity nondiscrimination policy

The University of Alabama system quietly erased explicit protections for LGBTQ+ people from its nondiscrimination policy.

The change, first reported by The Crimson White, appears to have been made sometime in November 2025, according to archived versions of the Equal Opportunity and Non-Discrimination Program pages for the system and its campuses in Birmingham and Huntsville. The pages previously listed “sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression” as protected categories, language that remains visible in documents hosted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

University officials told the student newspaper that the change was made to comply with federal law, particularly current federal interpretations of Title VII and Title IX.

Related: Alabama forces universities to implement trans bathroom ban while outlawing DEI

The Supreme Court last year sided with a straight woman who alleged that she faced workplace discrimination because she was not gay, rejecting a heightened legal standard for members of majority groups bringing Title VII claims. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s Justice Department has investigated schools across the country over policies allowing transgender students to participate in sports consistent with their gender identity, reflecting the Trump administration’s narrower view of Title IX and discrimination “on the basis of sex.”

University officials maintain that enforcement of the system’s nondiscrimination rules has not changed and described the new language as an “administrative change.”

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“The University will continue to promote a welcoming environment that is free from discrimination for all members of our campus community,” University spokesperson Alex House told the student newspaper.

Auburn University, Samford University, the University of South Alabama and the University of West Alabama, also state schools, all continue to specifically bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, according to Yellowhammer News.

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The change has upset many members of the university community. Will Thomas, vice president of the Lambda Society and co-founder and president of UA’s LGBTQ Alumni Association, criticized the decision in a guest opinion essay for AL.com.

“This move, even with empty promises that it is only a change in window dressing, is part of a longer and darker pattern of erosion of rights and guarantees for LGBTQ communities that are happening across institutions in our country,” Thomas wrote.

The university system removed the protections months after UA allowed a Young Americans for Freedom chapter on campus to omit references to gender ideology from its organizational constitution, a decision the group celebrated as an end to “compelled speech.”