Feds Levy Largest Ever $14 Million Fine on Liberty University Over Campus Safety Law Violations

A view of the Liberty University campus in Lynchburg, Va., on Apr. 14, 2023. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

Liberty University was hit with a record $14 million fine after a two-year investigation found that the evangelical Christian institution failed to comply with a federal campus crime-reporting law.

The fine is the largest ever imposed over violations of what’s known as the Clery Act, according to a March 5 announcement by the U.S. Department of Education. The 1990 law mandates colleges that receive federal dollars to disclose campus crime statistics to current and prospective students, their families, employees, and the federal government.

The previous largest Clery fine, $4.6 million, was issued in 2019 against Michigan State University. The Education Department penalized the university after determining that it mishandled sexual assault complaints against Larry Nassar, a former sports doctor who is currently serving up to 175 years in prison for molesting female gymnasts.

As part of a settlement agreement with the Education Department, Liberty will also spend $2 million over the next two years towards improving campus safety and complying with federal policies. The Lynchburg, Virginia-based university will be placed on a monitoring period through April 2026 to make sure that the school “executes on promised improvements.”

“Any further lapses in Clery Act compliance could jeopardize the terms of the University’s participation in the federal student aid programs or result in other administrative sanctions against the institution,” federal officials said.

Lawmakers Question Unfair Treatment

The $14 million fine is significantly lower than what the Education Department allegedly sought to impose on Liberty. In January, a group of House Republicans wrote in a letter that a leaked preliminary report suggested the purported penalty was $37.5 million.

In their letter, the lawmakers said they had “deep concern” about how the Education Department seemed to be “targeting religious institutions” through compliance reviews and fines that “greatly exceed established and documented precedent.”

“It has become increasingly evident that the department is prepared to make an example of Liberty University by issuing an exorbitant and unprecedented fine,” said the signatories, led by Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), the top Republican on the House education committee; and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who leads the House oversight committee.

In a lengthy response, Liberty officials echoed the Republicans’ sentiment that it was unfairly targeted, but nevertheless said they would honor the terms of the settlement agreement.

“Many of the Department’s methodologies, findings, and calculations in the report were drastically different from their historic treatment of other universities,” the university said Tuesday. “Liberty disagrees with this unfair treatment.”

Lawsuits Prompt Investigation

The Education Department initiated its lengthy and extensive compliance review on Liberty in February 2022, following three separate lawsuits brought against the university by a mix of former students and employees.

In the first lawsuit, filed in July 2021, a group of 12 women anonymously claimed that they were discouraged from reporting incidents of sexual assault or punished for violating Liberty’s honor code when they came forward with their complaints. They also alleged that the university focused on disciplining students for behaviors such as drinking alcohol and having premarital sex instead of investigating sexual assault allegations. The accusations in that lawsuit went back to as far as the year 2000.

The two subsequent lawsuits raised largely similar claims against Liberty, with former students accusing the Jerry Falwell-founded university of failing to adequately investigate claims of sexual assault. The complaints further claimed that Liberty’s campus police pressured women to drop claims by threatening to bring false report charges against them.

Liberty settled with most of the litigants in the original lawsuit in 2022, before the federal investigation concluded. In Tuesday’s public statement, it stressed that it has since invested over $10 million in upgrading campus security infrastructure, such as installing 1,000 new cameras throughout campus with enhanced facial recognition.

“While the university maintains that we have repeatedly endured selective and unfair treatment by the Department, the university also concurs there were numerous deficiencies that existed in the past,” the university said.

Liberty also “acknowledges and regrets” the past failures like “incorrect statistical reports,” as well as “warnings and emergency notifications” that weren’t sent in a timely manner.

Largest Christian University Fined $37.7 million

In October 2023, while its Clery investigation into Liberty was underway, the Education Department slapped a $37.7 million fine on Grand Canyon University, accusing the Christian institution of misrepresenting the cost of its doctoral programs.

For years, Liberty has branded itself as the largest Christian university in the country. However, Grand Canyon is considered the largest in terms of student enrollment. The Arizona school has about 118,000 students, and about three-quarters are enrolled online.

According to the Education Department, an investigation found that Grand Canyon had falsely advertised the price of its doctoral programs to over 7,500 students since 2017.

Specifically, the federal agency said, the vast majority of Grand Canyon’s doctoral graduates needed to take extra classes called “continuation courses” to complete their dissertation requirements. As a result, more than three-quarters of doctoral student graduates ended up paying $10,000 to $12,000 more than the advertised price to complete their programs.

The fine came after Grand Canyon published a lengthy statement alleging it was unfairly targeted by the federal government. Doctoral degrees, it argued, usually don’t have a fixed cost because of dissertations. In other words, even if doctoral students have completed the required 60 credits, they may still need to take continuation courses to finalize their dissertations.

“Anyone who thinks that GCU creates an expectation that a student will complete in 60 credits or three and a half years was not paying attention to GCU’s disclosures,” it said.