The Department of Education announced on Friday that it will be enforcing Title IX protections on the basis of biological sex, returning to a 2020 rule from the first Trump administration.
The move was announced in a “Dear Colleague” letter to K-12 schools and institutions on higher education and comes after the Biden administration’s 2024 “Title IX rewrite” to expand protections to include gender identity and sexual orientation was ruled unlawful by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
“The Biden Administration’s failed attempt to rewrite Title IX was an unlawful abuse of regulatory power and an egregious slight to women and girls,” acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement. “Under the Trump Administration, the Education Department will champion equal opportunity for all Americans, including women and girls, by protecting their right to safe and separate facilities and activities in schools, colleges, and universities.”
In a press release, the Department of Education said that returning to the 2020 rule eliminated a “serious threat to campus free speech,” ensuring stronger due process protections during Title IX proceedings.
Trainor expanded on how the move facilitates free speech and due process in a statement to the Washington Examiner: “A return to the Trump Administration’s 2020 Title IX Rule will respect and support victims of sexual misconduct and assault while restoring crucial due process rights for the accused, including live hearings and cross-examination.”
“The 2020 Title IX Rule will also bolster and protect free speech by returning to the Supreme Court-approved definition of sex-based harassment—namely, that it be ‘so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive’ that it effectively denies equal access to an education—rather than the expressly subjective 2024 Title IX Rule that, in effect, means a student, teacher, or professor could be liable for a violation for expressing a disfavored opinion about the reality of biological sex,” Trainor said.
“The Trump Administration is back, and so are the hard-earned rights of due process and free speech,” he added.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order requiring all departments in the executive branch to enforce “sex-protective laws to promote [the] reality” that there are “two sexes, male and female.”
Trump signed another order requiring employees across multiple federal departments to remove their preferred pronouns from their email signatures by Friday afternoon.
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The Department of Education’s announcement pours more cold water on legal efforts to ensure that transgender-identifying student-athletes, for example, may participate in the sport corresponding with their gender identity instead of their biological sex because the Office for Civil Rights does not recognize gender identity as a protected characteristic under Title IX.
In December, the Biden administration withdrew a proposal that would have penalized any school that banned biological males from participating in women’s sports.
