Bob Jones University regains nonprofit status 17 years after it dropped discriminatory policy
In a move that’s been more than two years in the making, Bob Jones University announced Wednesday it would regain its federal tax-exempt status on March 1, more than three decades after the IRS stripped its nonprofit status following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
The issue in the court case was the university’s refusal to allow interracial dating or marriage among students, staff or faculty of the university, a rule it has since abandoned.
The conservative Christian university dropped its interracial dating ban in a nationally televised interview with past president Bob Jones III on CNN’s Larry King Live in 2000. In 2008, past President Stephen Jones, great-grandson of evangelist and university founder Bob Jones, apologized for BJU’s past racial discrimination.
But the university hadn’t sought to reinstate its tax-exempt status until 2014 after Steve Pettit took over as the school’s fifth president in its 90-year history.
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