WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has restored Title IX regulations that civil rights advocates warn will make it harder for survivors of sexual harassment and assault to obtain protection from their schools while advancing a broader federal campaign targeting transgender students.
The U.S. Department of Education announced Sept. 28 that it had formally removed the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations and reinstated rules adopted during President Donald Trump’s first term in 2020.
The Biden-era regulations had already been blocked by multiple federal courts and ultimately vacated in two cases. The Education Department said the dismissal of remaining litigation over the rule cleared the way for the administration to formally restore the earlier regulatory language.
The Trump administration characterized the change as restoring Title IX to its original purpose and protecting the safety, privacy and athletic opportunities of women and girls.
“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,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.
The department said the 2024 regulations improperly expanded Title IX protections involving gender identity and accused the Biden administration of pushing schools to permit transgender women and girls to participate in women’s sports and use women’s facilities.
The department described its return to the 2020 rules as aligning Title IX’s sex-based protections “with biological reality, not ideological fantasy.”
Civil rights and gender justice organizations sharply disputed the administration’s framing, arguing that the decision does more than address transgender participation in sports and access to facilities.
They contend that restoring the 2020 rules also makes it more difficult for students who experience sexual harassment and assault to obtain protection from their schools.
Lambda Legal said the 2020 Title IX rules narrowed the circumstances in which schools must respond to sexual harassment and require college survivors to face cross-examination during live hearings.
“Lambda Legal has long called this what it is: a dangerous, legally unsound, and despicably cruel weaponization of Title IX, and we oppose its return today,” said Nicholas Hite, senior attorney and McDonald/Wright Distinguished Counsel at Lambda Legal.
Hite said the rule allows schools to avoid acting until harassment reaches a higher threshold and imposes additional barriers on students seeking institutional protection.
“Those barriers fall hardest on students who are already targeted, including transgender students, whom this administration has chosen to single out rather than protect,” Hite said. “Survivors deserve schools that take their safety seriously, whoever they are.”
The administration, meanwhile, has expanded its enforcement of its interpretation of Title IX through a Title IX Special Investigations Team created jointly by the Education and Justice departments.
The Education Department said the team has investigated entities including the California Department of Education, California Interscholastic Federation, Minnesota Department of Education, Minnesota State High School League and Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The department has also investigated educational institutions over allegations involving transgender participation in women’s sports and access to sex-separated facilities, while pursuing other investigations involving schools’ responses to allegations of sexual assault and harassment.
The National Women’s Law Center said the restored regulations weaken protections at a time when sexual violence and harassment remain significant problems in educational institutions.
“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,” Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at NWLC, said.
Patel said meaningful enforcement of Title IX should ensure schools provide equal educational opportunities to students rather than restrict the law’s protections based on reproductive anatomy.
NWLC pointed to the allegations surrounding Cornell University, where a former student has accused seven former students of sexually assaulting her at a fraternity house in 2024. The allegations are the subject of a civil lawsuit and renewed criminal investigation. No criminal charges have been filed against the seven men.
“The Cornell University case is a devastating example of why robust federal Title IX enforcement matters,” Patel said.
The controversy surrounding the Cornell case has intensified scrutiny of how colleges handle allegations of sexual violence and whether students receive adequate protection through university disciplinary systems and criminal investigations.
“Yet, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Trump administration have decided to ignore what survivors need, instead weaponizing Title IX to attack trans students,” Patel said.
Public Justice similarly argued that returning to the 2020 regulations reduces schools’ obligations to address sexual harassment.
The organization said the Biden administration’s 2024 regulations were intended to strengthen protections against sexual harassment, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and pregnancy discrimination.
“The Trump administration refused to defend the 2024 Title IX regulations in court so it could do exactly this: return to its prior regulations without going through the proper administrative procedure to repeal a regulation,” said Alexandra Brodsky, litigation director for Public Justice’s Students’ Civil Rights Project. “Student survivors, pregnant and parenting students, and LGBTQ+ students will pay the price.”
The restoration of the 2020 rules is part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to redefine federal policy around sex and gender identity.
On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed the presidential action “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” directing federal agencies to recognize sex as male or female and stating that gender identity should not replace sex when agencies interpret and enforce federal law.
The executive order specifically rejected the Biden administration’s interpretation that federal sex-discrimination protections could require gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces and directed agencies to rescind guidance inconsistent with the Trump administration’s interpretation.
The dispute over Title IX therefore extends well beyond athletic eligibility or access to bathrooms and locker rooms. At stake are competing interpretations of the federal civil rights law and the extent of schools’ obligations toward students facing sexual harassment, assault and discrimination.
The Trump administration says its approach restores sex-based protections for women and girls. Civil rights advocates argue that the same regulatory rollback leaves survivors with fewer protections while making transgender students a central target of federal Title IX enforcement.
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