A move by the Trump Administration has just officially made Title IX — the groundbreaking 1972 statue meant to end sex discrimination in education — weaker than ever before, say legal experts.
As a result, it will harm students who are LGBTQ and those who, like the Cornell 7 case’s Jane Doe, have faced sexual assault on campus.
“Title IX should be a shield against discrimination,” said the ACLU’s deputy legal director, Louise Melling, in a statement. “Instead, this administration has treated it like a sword to weaponize against our most vulnerable students.”
The change, announced on Monday by the Trump Administration’s Department of Education, reverses Biden-era rules that expanded protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity at schools that receive federal funding.
It reinstates the 2020 Title IX rule as put in place by Trump the first time around, and a press release about the reversal declares that it ensures “Title IX regulations faithfully reflects court orders and Congressional intent.” It also notes that the administration “will continue to relentlessly champion equal opportunity for all Americans and hold accountable any school or college that violates the rights, privacy, or athletic opportunities of our women and girls.”
Civil-rights experts disagree.
“This change is another part of the irrational attempts by the Republican administration to write trans and queer students out of existence,” says Lambda Legal senior attorney Nicholas Hite.
While the Obama administration issued informal guidance that Title IX protects trans and gender nonconforming students, he says, and the Biden administration attempted to formalize that guidance as a binding rule, the Trump administration has “eliminated those informal and formal protections and is now trying to rewrite the meaning of Title IX to exclude trans and gender nonconforming students from any protections at all.”
Here’s a breakdown of what it all means.
What is Title IX?
The 1972 law aimed to end sex discrimination in education.
While most know it for requiring that schools provide girls with equal athletic opportunities to those of boys, the law also applies to all aspects of a school’s educational system — such as sex-segregation, the rights of pregnant and parenting teens, and gender-based harassment or assault.
“Title IX benefits both boys and girls and is the lynchpin of 40 years of efforts to promote and establish gender equity in schools,” an ACLU fact sheet notes.
How Did Trump Change Title IX in 2020?
During his first term, Trump narrowed the statute’s definition of sexual harassment, gave colleges and universities wide leeway regarding when they had to respond to harassment complaints, and required college assault survivors to face cross-examinations at live hearings.
How Biden Strengthen Title IX in 2024?
In 2024, amid mounting state efforts to restrict the rights of trans youth, the Biden Administration strengthened Title IX to explicitly include protections for LGBTQ students.
“At a critical time, when trans youth are being used by politicians as a punching bag, the final rule issues an important reminder that schools cannot discriminate based on gender identity, transgender status, or sexual orientation,” the ACLU noted at the time.
Changes in 2024 included the restoration of requirements for schools to investigate a wide array of sex-based harassment incidents, and clarification that a person who is transgender cannot be prevented from participating in an educational program or activity consistent with their gender identity.
The Latest Trump Alterations to Title IX
In the months leading up to this week’s formal announcement, the administration has been vocal about aligning “Title IX’s sex-based protections with biological reality, not ideological fantasy,” as it noted in the latest press release, and has launched several Title IX investigations meant to root out and eject transgender women from women’s athletics.
Now the 2020 version of the law has been reinstated, mainly weakening rules around sexual discrimination and assault, excluding LGBTQ students from any protection, and watering down protections for pregnant students “to the point of collapse,” says Hite.
Lambda Legal called this latest move “a dangerous, legally unsound, and despicably cruel weaponization of Title IX, and we oppose its return today.”
Title IX, the organization continued, “exists so every student can learn free from harassment and assault. Yet this rule from the Trump administration lets schools look away until harm becomes severe and pervasive, and forces survivors through re-traumatizing courtroom-style cross-examination just to be heard.”
Those hit the hardest, the statement notes, will be “students who are already targeted, including transgender students, whom this administration has chosen to single out rather than protect.”
It will also be harder for students to prove abuse by reducing the physical locations over which a school can exercise investigative powers, imposing a “live hearing” format for such cases, and permitting schools to impose a high burden of evidence that is difficult for survivors to achieve.
The Trump rollbacks, says Hite, create barriers to effective remedies for the “pervasive assault and harassment plaguing campuses,” and does nothing but “favor cisgender men over everyone else, creating a perverse version of Title IX that is fundamentally anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ.”
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