An Administrator's Guide to California Private School Law

Chapter 13 - Student Applications And Enrollment Contracts

D. G ENDER Many student applications have a section for a family to identify the applicant’s gender. This section sometimes provides a choice between designating a male or female gender. Some schools are beginning to shift away from the binary designation between male and female by broadening the categories used to identify gender. For example, some schools allow applicants to self-identify their gender as male, female, or allow the applicant to fill in their own description of gender. College applications for the University of California allow applicants to choose between six gender categories, including male, female, trans male/trans man, trans female/trans woman, gender queer/gender nonconforming, and different identity.

A DMISSIONS

Section 3

A. N ON -D ISCRIMINATORY B ASED A DMISSIONS To qualify for tax-exempt status, non-profit private schools may not discriminate against applicants or students on the basis of their color, race, ethnic or national origin. Discrimination on the basis of race is defined by the IRS as discrimination on the basis of national or ethnic origin or color. 1972 Under IRS guidelines, “[a] racially nondiscriminatory policy toward students means that the school admits the students of any race to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at that school and that the school does not discriminate on the basis of race in administering its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletic and other school-administered programs.” Further, the existence of a racially discriminatory policy that applies to faculty and staff is indicative of a racially discriminatory policy that applies to students. 1973 Schools that receive state financial aid may be subject to additional anti-discrimination regulations. 1974 Private schools that receive or benefit from state financial assistance, or enroll pupils who receive state student financial aid, are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of gender, gender identity, gender expressions, sexual orientation, ethnic group identification, race, national origin, religion, color, mental or physical disability, or immigration status, among other protected categories. 1975 1. R ACIALLY N ONDISCRIMINATORY P OLICY S TATEMENT A ND T HE “P UBLICITY R EQUIREMENT ” A non-profit school’s racially nondiscriminatory statement must be included on all brochures and catalogs dealing with student admission, programs, scholarships and written advertising used for recruitment. 1976 The Internal Revenue Service’s “publicity requirement” mandates that private schools make their racially nondiscriminatory policy known to all segments of the general community served by the school by publishing it in a newspaper of general circulation or the broadcast media. While there are exceptions to this requirement, the IRS “encourages” schools to meet its requirements even if the institution qualifies for an exception. 1977 A reference to a

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