President Donald Trump’s administration is officially scrapping the Biden administration’s Title IX rewrite, restoring rules that define sex protections around biological sex.
In other words, Washington has once again discovered that real women are, in fact, a protected sex under a law created to prohibit sex discrimination in education.
According to a report [1] in The Hill, the Department of Education announced Monday that it is formally rescinding the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX regulations and reinstating the 2020 rules adopted during Trump’s first term.
The Biden rule expanded Title IX protections to include discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. It became tangled in litigation, was blocked by multiple federal courts and ultimately vacated nationwide by a federal judge in January 2025.
The Trump administration says returning to the 2020 framework protects women’s privacy and athletic opportunities, including female-only bathrooms, locker rooms and sports. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the administration intends to hold schools accountable when they violate those protections.
Democratic critics see things very differently. Leaders of the Democratic Women’s Caucus and Congressional Equality Caucus argue the change strips protections from LGBTQ students.
But under Trump, the federal government’s position is considerably less complicated and doesn’t include a mandate requiring schools to treat gender identity as biological sex when deciding who can compete in women’s sports or access female bathrooms and locker rooms.