Well, well, well… if it isn’t my oldest enemy… Title IX reform.
Okay, that’s not fair. My oldest enemy is gender dysphoria. Or possibly my estranged father. It’s hard to say for sure… but that’s neither here nor there! Let’s talk about that great political football, Title IX of the 1972 amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965!
For the uninitiated: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (among other things) banned discrimination in employment, but made no mention of discriminatory practices in education, so Congress cobbled together and passed the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX of those amendments reads, in part, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
There you have it! Gender-based discrimination in the American education system, defeated forever. Except, hang on a minute… what about transed genders?
In 2014, then-president Barack Obama’s Department of Education declared that Title IX protections extended to transgender students. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon, working for the department’s Civil Rights Division, issued a 36-page memo that provided guidance on the issue.
“All students, including transgender students and students who do not conform to sex stereotypes, are protected from sex-based discrimination under Title IX,” Lhamon wrote. “Under Title IX, a recipient [of funding from the Department of Education] generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity in all aspects of the planning, implementation, enrollment, operation, and evaluation of single-sex classes.”
Unfortunately, because this interpretation of Title IX never advanced beyond an Education Department memo, Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos reversed protections for transgender students in 2017, during Donald Trump’s first term as president.
Fortunately, because this interpretation of Title IX never advanced beyond a Department of Health and Human Services memo, then-president Joe Biden was able to reinstate Title IX protections for transgender students, issuing Executive Order 14021, “Guaranteeing an Educational Environment Free From Discrimination on the Basis of Sex, Including Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity,” in the Federal Register.
Unfortunately, because this interpretation of Title IX was challenged by 26 states—resulting in injunctions that were upheld by the totally apolitical Supreme Court—the Biden administration failed to make headway. Just a few weeks before Trump’s second inauguration, a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge took EO 14021 out back and put it out of its misery.
On Monday, Trump’s Education Department issued a press release in which they formally reversed the Biden-era interpretation of Title IX and reinstated their own 2020 policy. They also tout two agreements they reached (at metaphorical gunpoint) with UPenn and Wagner College, forcing them to denigrate their trans athletes; announce the formation of the Title IX Special Investigations Team, a physical manifestation of burning taxpayer money; and brag about the federal funding they’ve stripped from schools that dared to oppose their ideological crusade.
What does this change? Nothing, actually! ED admits as much in their own two-page facts sheet. No new legislation has been passed, and the department is simply continuing to enforce Title IX in the same way they’ve been enforcing it since Trump returned to office in January of 2025.
This is Linda McMahon taking a meaningless victory lap to celebrate an interpretation of Title IX that is no more valid than Biden’s so-called “illegal rewrite,” and the likelihood of Congress passing any legitimate changes to Title IX anytime soon are slim to none. If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, we’ll probably see another change in Title IX protections… if we’re lucky.
