Biden’s New Title IX Rules Add Protections for LGBTQ+ Students But Not Trans Athletes

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The U.S. Department of Education unveiled a long-awaited overhaul of Title IX anti-discrimination protections on Friday morning, promising to safeguard the rights of LGBTQ+ students and victims of sexual assault.

The new regulations will be officially published on April 29, but a 1,395-page document explaining the changes and the DoE’s responses to public comments was published in the Federal Register early Friday morning.

When the new rules go into effect on August 1, educational institutions that receive federal funding will be required to comply with a new standard of what constitutes “sex discrimination,” which will now officially include discriminatory or harassing behavior towards queer, transgender, and intersex people. Trans students’ right to use a gendered facility at school that matches their gender identity will be protected under the rules changes, as well as their right to be addressed by their proper name and pronouns. Protections were also added for students who are pregnant, parenting, or who terminate a pregnancy.

The new rules come as a result of the Biden administration’s assertion back in 2021 that sex-based protections under Title IX also cover a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation. In 2022, the administration first proposed updated rules reflecting that position, but those changes have since been held up for nearly two years — in part due to an injunction from a federal judge, which blocked implementation of the updated guidelines in 20 states, as well as the over 240,000 public comments received regarding the proposals.

Friday’s document also struck down Trump-era changes to Title IX under former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, which strengthened protections for students accused of sexual assault based on assertions that men were being unjustly presumed guilty. The updated rules roll back those changes, particularly a requirement that sexual assault disputes be resolved in a live hearing with all parties present. Additionally, student athletes who are accused of sexual assault will be allowed to continue playing on their teams during investigations under the 2024 rules, as officials said immediately removing them would create an unfair burden.

“Students who experience sexual violence or discrimination shouldn’t have to weigh our safety against our ability to go to class or participate in campus life,” said Emily Bach, a New York college student and organizer with the campaign Know Your IX, in an emailed statement Friday. “The Biden Administration’s updated Title IX rule will make sure that students who experience harm can come forward and seek support without jeopardizing our ability to graduate on time or get a degree.”

The new rules still do not include a proposal by the Biden administration which would have established similar non-discrimination protections for trans student athletes — meaning that schools will still be allowed to ban trans girls and boys from sports teams that are divided based on sex assigned at birth. That rule is expected to be on hold until after the U.S. general election in November, as administration officials revealed last month, because the issue is “too much of a hot topic,” as one anonymous official told the Washington Post, and could further jeopardize Biden’s chances against his presumptive challenger Donald Trump. (A recent study funded by the International Olympic Committee found evidence that trans women athletes face several significant disadvantages, rather than overwhelming advantages, when competing against cisgender women.) Biden has come under fire over the course of his first term as president for talking a big game about trans rights, but ultimately failing to deliver impactful results.

Sources told *The* *Washington Post* that the regulations are “too much of a hot topic” for an election year.

Though LGBTQ+ and assault survivors’ advocates generally praised the rules changes, some also expressed dismay that the Biden administration did not fight hard enough to enact tougher regulations.

“[A]s we celebrate this milestone, we recognize that this regulation does not go far enough in making the law’s protections clear for all student athletes,” wrote representatives from the National Women’s Law Center and 22 other advocacy groups in a joint statement on Friday, noting that 37% of trans, nonbinary, and intersex young people live in states where they are forbidden from joining sports leagues that match their gender identity.

“We call on President Biden and his administration to finish the job by providing further clarification for inclusive protections in athletics and robustly enforcing Title IX to ensure all students, including transgender, nonbinary, and intersex student athletes, realize the law’s full protections,” the joint statement continued, “because all students deserve the freedom to be themselves, to learn and to do their best at school.”

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