President Donald Trump’s Department of Education announced the repeal of Title IX guidances protecting students from discrimination or harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity on Friday.
In a letter from Craig Trainor, the Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the DOE, the Trump administration struck Biden-era protections for LGBTQ+ students and restored 2020 rules that lengthened complaints by mandating hearings and cross-examinations in investigations.
Victims’ rights advocates said at the time that rules in Trump’s first term made it harder to report incidents or seek justice, a sentiment some echoed on Friday.
“This dangerous rollback changes Title IX from a law that protects women, girls, and LGBTQ students into one that shields schools enabling harm,” Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, said on X.
Trainor added in his letter that a Trump executive order against “gender ideology” was “fatal to the 2024 Title IX Rule,” claiming the department had to follow the president’s legal interpretation of sex.
“The president’s interpretation of the law governs because he alone controls and supervises subordinate officers who exercise discretionary executive power on his behalf,” Trainor wrote.
Title IX lawyer Melissa Carleton told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the claim was “an exceptionally broad assertion of power [that] doesn’t have any real legal bearing on Title IX.” Still, Carleton said, schools were “basically going in a time machine” to the days before the Biden rule changes.
The change comes after a federal judge ruled against the Biden-era policy tweaks earlier this month, barring nationwide enforcement of the protections.
Still, not all states are ready to comply with the rollback. California Superintendent Tony Thurmond said the state’s students would be protected as federal regulations “devolved.”
“California law is unaffected by recent changes to federal policy and continues to provide safeguards against discrimination and harassment based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation,” he wrote in a statement.
