The Department of Education (ED) just announced that it would be rescinding Biden-era sexual assault and discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ college students under Title IX, the federal law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in education.
In a release posted to its website, ED announced that it would end rules put in place during the Biden administration that said Title IX protects LGBTQ+ students – as well as pregnant students and students who are parents – from discrimination. The rule followed the logic of the 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton Co., which found that Title VII’s ban on job discrimination based on sex included LGBTQ+ people because it’s impossible to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity without taking sex assigned at birth into account.
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The Biden rule also set rules for how colleges handled formal Title IX complaints regarding discrimination and sexual harassment.
The Biden era rules faced numerous challenges from red states in court and were struck down in 2025 by a federal judge in Kentucky after another court had already temporarily blocked them in 26 states. The Trump administration said it has not been enforcing the Biden rule and instead has been working from its own Title IX guidance.
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“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,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. The press release went on to say that the Trump administration is keeping trans girls out of school sports, which is not related to the rule change.
The LGBTQ+ organization HRC said in a release that the new rule will mean that “the voices of survivors of rape and sexual assault” will be “suppressed” and that it will be “easier for their perpetrators to get away with their actions.”
ED announced today that it will officially publish a new rule rescinding the Biden rule tomorrow. This means that Title IX rules set in place during Trump’s first term are now back in effect.
“Title IX is, quite simply, about protecting students and ensuring that they are safe from abuse, harassment, and discrimination while they pursue their education. But Donald Trump and his cronies aren’t interested in any of that,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a statement. “Instead of enforcing protections for students, they’re rescinding them. They don’t care if sexual harassment and assault go unaddressed. And they’re happy to strip funding away from school districts and states that are actually trying to keep students safe. We know who will be hurt: women, girls, and others who are vulnerable to sexual harassment, assault, and abuse — including LGBTQ+ students.”
Calling it a “monstrous injustice,” Robinson noted that the administration did not allow the usual comment period before announcing the rule change.
“The fact that they’re dropping this rule into place abruptly, without a comment period, denying families, educators, loved ones and the students themselves a say in how they should be treated, shows how little they care about the safety of our students,” she said.
Sexual assault survivor advocates also denounced the new Trump rule.
“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 of the National Women’s Law Center told Politico. “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.”
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