The United States Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, announced on Monday that the Department of Education has rescinded the Biden administration 2024 rule and reinstated the first Trump administration’s rule on protections for gender identity and sexuality.
This change in policy places queer students and survivors of sexual assault at extreme risk on campus, as they are no longer protected from discrimination under Title IX. Policy regarding pronouns, gender presentation, and sexuality is now left to local and state outlines, with no federal mandate to foster inclusivity.
“Today’s rulemaking restores the commonsense language promulgated in the first Trump Administration, which we have been enforcing since the first days of the Administration,” said McMahon.
“Thanks to today’s action, the published Title IX regulations faithfully reflect court orders and Congressional intent—reducing confusion for parents, students, and educational institutions. We will continue to relentlessly 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.”
The “confusion” and “athletic opportunities” McMahon refers to are the gender identities of students and the inclusion of trans people in sports, of which there are fewer than 10 according to the National Collegiate Athletics Association.
Preventing trans and queer students from using pronouns and gendered spaces that align with their gender identities is extremely harmful and puts them at risk of harassment and violence against them because of their identity.
Queer students are at a high risk of sexual assault when on campus, with 19% of lesbian woman and 32% of bisexual woman reporting being assaulted at least once on a college campus.
Given the higher rates of violence against queer students, removing Title IX protections for them is an exercise in cruelty.
“Title IX is, quite simply, about protecting students and ensuring that they are safe from abuse, harassment, and discrimination while they pursue their education,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “But Donald Trump and his cronies aren’t interested in any of that.”
”We know who will be hurt: women, girls, and others who are vulnerable to sexual harassment, assault and abuse — including LGBTQ+ students. The fact that they’re dropping this rule into place abruptly — shows how little they care about the safety of our students.”
The lack of notice is a demonstration of this cruelty, similar to the reversal of Roe v Wade, as students and faculty were given no time to prepare to adopt local or campus wide protections.
This reversal comes in face of multiple sexual assault litigations across the nation’s campuses, namely the Cornell 7, where a woman was raped by seven male university students who face no serious repercussions for their actions. The removal of these protections removes the federal outline or incentive to provide protections for students, of any marginalized group.
“The Cornell University case is a devastating example of why robust federal Title IX enforcement matters,” said Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice for the National Women’s Law Center.
“Sexual harassment and assault continue to be pervasive in schools and, to the fullest extent possible, we should be working to enforce the laws that protect student survivors of sexual violence. Yet, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Trump administration have decided to ignore what survivors need, instead weaponizing Title IX to attack trans students.”
Having openly trans students on a school site or campus is not a danger to other students as the Trump administration claims, they are getting an education the same as other students.
A 2015 national survey found that 47% of trans people had been sexually assaulted, compared to 19.3% of cis women. Trans women face far more of a risk for sexual violence, yet the department in charge of protections for them ignore this fact entirely.
But the Department of Education would rather see them placed in a situation without protections than address violations of the policy around the nation.
Trans students in many states across the nation are now being placed at extreme risk because of this change, as protections are now decided at the state level. Many states have no protections at all, leaving many students completely defenseless.
Most of these states are red states, like Oklahoma, which saw the murder of Nex Benedict in 2024. School administrators were aware that Benedict had been getting harassed, but due to the anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric of Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters, they had no means to address it.
Thankfully, California does have several state protections for queer students, such as California Education Code Section 220, which bans discrimination against sexual orientation and gender identity, and Seth’s Law, which requires districts to intervene in anti LGBTQ harassment.
While students are still technically safe from discrimination under the basic outlines of Title IX, removing the clarification that included queer students allows states or the federal government to fully strip protections fully through loopholes in the law.
“As much as President Trump may suggest that he can rewrite Title IX, that is not within the power of the executive,” says Chase Strangio, co-director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Project.
“Title IX itself still prohibits sex discrimination in education, and the Supreme Court has held that it is impossible to discriminate against someone for being gay or transgender without discriminating on the basis of sex.”
