A coalition of 19 Democratic attorneys general has weighed in and favor a legal challenge to Trump-era rules that automatically exempt religious colleges from Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded education programs, if its provisions go against their religious tenets about sexuality and gender. The class action lawsuit was brought in April by 33 LGBT students against the U.S. Department of Education, as well as a variety of evangelical Christian colleges they attended or tried to attend. The students alleged that those schools created an abusive and unsafe campus environment for them, because of Title IX religious exemption rules issued in 2020 by then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. In an amicus brief (pdf) filed on Nov. 1, the attorneys general of 18 states and the District of Columbia support the students’ claim that the 2020 rules are unlawful. According to the Education Department, the rules expanded …