Tennessee College Agrees to Amend Holiday Policies Deemed Biased Against Jewish Students

A Tennessee university has agreed to end discrimination against its Jewish students under a settlement reached this week with federal civil rights and health officials, the Department Justice (DOJ) said Tuesday.

Lincoln Memorial University’s osteopathic college, the DOJ said, had one set of rules for Jewish students who needed time off for holidays and another set for everybody else.

The deal closes a joint DOJ and Health and Human Services (HHS) investigation under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Affordable Care Act, which ban race, color, and national-origin discrimination at institutions taking in federal funds. Courts have long included anti-Semitism in those laws.

LMU’s DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine has campuses in Harrogate and Knoxville, Tennessee, and Orange Park, Florida. 

Officials found that when Jewish students during the 2025-26 year asked the college to shift classes, exams, and other work around their holidays, they were turned down. Classmates who weren’t Jewish had the same request granted.

By January 2026, the Jewish students objected to the split treatment. The college then scrapped religious accommodations altogether. Excused absences would still be available for “professional student leadership obligations” and other non-religious reasons.

The university did not immediately return a request for comment.

The DOJ and HHS opened the case in February, saying the probe would investigate whether the college was “intentionally preventing Jewish students from completing their exams during the Spring semester.”

Tuesday’s settlement requires the college to rewrite its absence policy so religious reasons sit on the same footing as non-religious ones. Approved absences carry no academic penalty. The college must train students, administrators, professors, faculty, and staff on the new rule. LMU also has to undo every penalty it imposed on Jewish students who were denied accommodations last school year.

Because the university cooperated, it keeps its federal funding. The Civil Rights Division will close the case once LMU finishes the work.

“Students of all ethnic and religious backgrounds—including Jewish students—should receive the same treatment at our nation’s universities,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “As its Jewish students prepare this week to observe Yom Kippur, we commend Lincoln Memorial University for its swift action addressing the Department’s concerns regarding discrimination and unequal treatment.”

Paula M. Stannard, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, connected the case to recent department guidance on anti-Semitism for HHS-funded entities. 

“Our nation’s future healthcare professionals should be able to pursue their training without compromising their faith or their civil rights,” she said. “Through our joint action with the Department of Justice, Lincoln Memorial University is ending practices that penalized Jewish students and will establish clear protections for religious accommodations moving forward.”

This case sits inside a larger Civil Rights Division docket. Dhillon said in August, after a judge dismissed a separate antisemitism suit against Harvard, that the division is actively investigating anti-Semitism nationwide.

The administration has also frozen grants and used Civil Rights Act findings to force policy changes at other campuses, including Northwestern and UCLA, in regard to protests and alleged hostile environments after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.