The United States Department of Education (DOE) announced on Monday that it is formally rescinding 2024 interpretations to Title IX aimed at strengthening protections for gender-identity based discrimination for students.
Although federal rules and interpretations on Title IX affect public institutions, such as the CSU, Cal State Fullerton’s Nondiscrimination Policy remains in effect and unchanged.
“The CSU’s Nondiscrimination Policy prohibits discrimination and harassment based on protected statuses which include gender, gender identity (including nonbinary or transgender), gender expression, sex (including sex stereotyping or sex characteristics), and sexual orientation,” wrote Executive Director for Civil Rights and Title IX Coordinator Sarah Bauer in an email to the Daily Titan. “Students and employees may visit the Reporting Options page on our web site for more information on how to report.”
In 2024, under Former President Joe Biden, the DOE released a clarification surrounding the scope and regulation of Title IX, most notably attempting to include protections for LGBTQ+ students in the 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, in which the Supreme Court ruled to protect gay and transgender individuals from workplace discrimination.
Ongoing litigations and hesitations to enact the Biden-era rule halted its implementation in 26 states in 2024. This announcement follows the dismissal of all appeals and the resolution of all litigation related to the 2024 rule, according to a fact sheet released by the DOE.
“The Department can now take the final step of formally removing the vacated 2024 rule from the Code of Federal Regulations,” the fact sheet reads. “Today, the Trump Administration is taking the final step of removing the vacated Biden-era regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations and restoring the Code as it appeared the day before promulgation of the 2024 rule.”
The fact sheet refers to a 2020 rule, made during Trump’s first term and under then Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, that sought to redefine Title IX protections, specifically the grievance process, or the process institutions take to address complaints of sexual misconduct or assault.
The rule defines what qualifies as sexual misconduct, when it is a school’s responsibility to take action and describes actionable sexual harassment as “so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive.”
Although taken from a Supreme Court ruling, critics of the rule showed concern that the new standards would deter students from reporting sexual misconduct due to apprehension about pursuing a formal investigation and information confidentiality concerns during those investigations.
The 2020 rule provides data about harassment and discrimination LGBTQ+ students face, but does not identify transgender individuals as threats to women, girls or women’s sports, and instead acknowledges that legislating about discrimination in athletics based on sex is outside the scope of its authority as a department.
The announcement detailing the administration’s formal rescission of the Biden-era rule, though, cites it as “restoring Title IX protections for women and girls” and as part of its goal to return “enforcement to biological reality.”
While the Biden-era rule focused on clarifying protections for various protected classes, such as disabled and pregnant students, as well as procedures surrounding reported sexual misconduct, criticisms of the rule surrounded its discussion of gender-based discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.
Records of the rule are not available on the department’s website, but can be found through federal archives.
As per the fact sheet, the Trump administration has restated its commitment to continuing a Title IX rule from the first Trump term, and has stated that because of ongoing litigation halting the implementation of the 2024 rule, “nothing changes in practice for individual students, parents and teachers.”
This announcement marks the latest in a stream of Trump administration policies targeting transgender individuals, specifically athletes and students.
The administration has cited that a return to the rule enacted in 2020 will strengthen due- process protections for all students, and a press release from Sept. 28 quoted U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon as upholding the decision as a step to “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.”