The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has revoked a 2024 Biden administration Title IX rule on Monday that had extended the statute’s protections against sex discrimination to discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The move, which will take immediate effect without a notice-and-comment period, comes as part of the Trump administration’s effort to restructure gender legislation in schools and sports.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced on Monday that the department had reinstated the first Trump administration’s 2020 Title IX rule in the Code of Federal Regulations. Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in programs receiving federal funding.
The Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX rule instated protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, including violations for actions such as improper use of preferred pronouns or questioning a student’s preferred gender.
The reinstatement comes after federal courts dismissed all remaining litigation surrounding the Biden administration’s regulations last month, allowing the Trump administration to restore its 2020 rule. Although the regulations are now officially encoded in the Sept. 29 Federal Register, the Trump administration has been informally enforcing the 2020 rules since January 2025, emphasizing its desire to enforce Title IX on the basis of sex rather than gender identity, claiming the Biden-era rule caused “immeasurable harm” to women and girls.
McMahon said the reinstatement reflects the Trump administration’s plan to align “sex-based protections with biological reality, not ideological fantasy.”
“Today’s rulemaking clears the Biden Administration’s illegal rewrite of Title IX from the Code of Federal Regulations and restores the commonsense language promulgated in the first Trump Administration, which we have been enforcing since the first days of the Administration,” McMahon said. “We 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.”
The DOE also established new regulations around sports and intimate facilities in Monday’s ruling. The department signed resolution agreements with higher education institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania and Wagner College, which obligated them to re-establish sex-separated sports and intimate facilities, restore titles on the basis of sex, and “apologize to female athletes” for their prior policies allowing sex discrimination.
Alongside these actions, the DOE partnered with the U.S. Department of Justice to create the Title IX Special Investigations Team, consisting of attorneys and investigators to expedite Title IX investigations and enforcement.
Following Monday’s ruling, the DOE has launched Title IX investigations into the California Community College Athletic Association, the New Richmond School and Western Carolina University amid allegations involving transgender participation in sports and access to sex-separated facilities.
Beyond challenging protections against sex-based discrimination for LGBTQ+ students, the Trump administration’s newly reinstated 2020 rule alters the way universities handle sexual misconduct allegations. According to 2020 Washington Post coverage, the rule “creates a judicial-like process in which the accused has the right to a live hearing and to cross-examine accusers.”
The Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX did not require cross-examinations as part of sexual misconduct investigations to avoid “potentially re-traumatizing survivors and discouraging reporting,” according to the American Council on Education. Instead, the 2024 rule marked a return to the single-investigator model, made cross-examinations optional and reduced the evidence a college must share with the accused to a written summary.
The action has sparked conversation about Title IX and its protections among higher education leaders, with some raising concerns over how the policy will impact protections for LGBTQ+ students. Shiwali Patel, senior director of education at the National Women’s Law Center, said the Trump administration is removing protections that allow for ethical sexual misconduct investigations.
“While the administration is unlawfully eroding protections for trans students under the guise of ‘protecting women and girls,’ they are systematically weakening the very laws that keep students safe and schools accountable,” Patel said. “Protecting women and girls means not limiting Title IX protections based on students’ reproductive traits and anatomy and enforcing Title IX to make sure schools are inclusive spaces that provide equal educational opportunity for all students.”
Although Trump has rescinded Biden’s rule, Politico reported that he may face legal pushback for reinstating his administration’s 2020 rule without going through the notice and comment process that has accompanied other cases of Title IX revision.
When the DOE revised its interpretation and enforcement of Title IX under the first Trump administration, Betsy DeVos, then-education secretary, received more than 100,000 comments through the rulemaking process, and Miguel Cardona, former education secretary under the Biden administration, received nearly three times that.
Michela DiLorenzo is the head editor of The Setonian’s News section. She can be reached at michela.dilorenzo@student.shu.edu.
