Is This Legal?

Rexburg, Idaho, is where Brigham Young University-Idaho (a Mormon private university) is located. When I was there over the weekend, I saw dozens of signs that looked like they might have drifted out of the 1950s:



Apparently, if you don't live on campus at BYU-Idaho, you are required to live in approved off-campus housing--and single men can only live in apartment buildings with other single men, and ditto for single women.

Now, let me be clear: I think that if BYU-Idaho wants to impose a requirement like this for its students, it should have that right. They are concerned about putting single young men and women in close proximity, tempting them to sexual immorality, and are trying to make sure that this doesn't happen. Since many (all?) public universities have gone to co-ed dorms over the last twenty years, I can somewhat understand BYU-Idaho's concerns. I can see why they might regard allowing young men and young women to share an apartment as a recipe for cohabitation.

I am hard pressed to see how requiring them to live in separate buildings enhances chastity. The distance between apartments in separate buildings was sometimes less than the distance between apartments within the same building. But okay, if BYU-Idaho students consider this absurd, then they don't have to go to BYU-Idaho. (And before you email me: "What about homosexual Mormons?" They do exist; I blogged several years ago about a Mormon man living a double life: sexually abused as a child, who believed that this was what caused his homosexuality, which led to his contraction of AIDS and subsequent death.)

What concerns me is that I'm not sure how this can possibly be legal. Under the Fair Housing Act:

As made applicable by section 803 of this title and except as exempted by sections 803(b) and 807 of this title, it shall be unlawful--

(a) To refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.

(b) To discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.

(c) To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.

Maybe there's some exemption for sex discrimination when done by a university in off-campus housing, but I can't immediately find it. Craig's List was being sued a few years ago for allowing people to post "roommate wanted" ads that specified the sex of the desired roommate.

I understand why the Fair Housing Act was passed, and I have only a vague intellectual discomfort with it. But I find myself wondering: why is this blatant discrimination above lawful in Rexburg? And if it isn't lawful, why are landlords allowed to not only discriminate based on sex, but advertise it loudly?

Sometimes the best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it to its absurd limits.

UPDATE: A reader points to this statement from BYU-Idaho that suggests that Title IX has an exemption for housing which is strictly for students, and does not allow non-students.