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The Department of Education announced Sept. 28 that it had repealed federal regulations that protected students from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity under Title IX.
“The recission of critical protections codified under the former Title IX regulations is sure to place trans and queer community members at even greater risk for harm in our educational spaces,” Dr. Pilar Margarita Hernández Escontrías, Research Director for Seattle University School of Law’s Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice, said in an email.
It was the “final step” of formally removing the Title IX protections from the Code of Federal Regulations, according to the education department’s fact sheet.
President Trump’s Education department never enforced the protections it formally rescinded Monday. Put in place in 2024 under the Biden administration, the protections had already been struck down by a federal district judge in Kentucky by the time Trump had returned to office in January 2025. Days into Trump’s second term, the Education department announced that it would operate under the Title IX interpretation in place during Trump’s first term.
“The current Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX endorses an outdated and transphobic view of gender as biologically determined,” Escontrías said.
Escontrías said the department’s move may be setting the stage for an amendment to Title IX it wants to pass that would “recognize the existence of only two sexes, male and female, that are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” in line with language from an executive order Trump signed the first day of his second term.
The education department also announced Monday it would launch more investigations into schools that allow transgender athletes to compete against cisgender atheletes, specifically in girls’ and womens’ sports. One such investigation is ongoing in the Puyallup School District, for allowing a cisgender athlete to compete against a transgender athlete in a girls’ sports match.
“Similar investigations are likely to unfold across educational contexts as this administration weaponizes the law to diminish the safety of trans people,” Escontrías said.
Washington state law includes explicit protections for public school students against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity.
For more information on protections for LGBTQ students in Washington public schools, visit ospi.k12.wa.us/policy-funding/equity-and-civil-rights/information-families-civil-rights-washington-schools/gender-inclusive-schools.
