Education Department Reinstates Title IX Regulations Protecting Women’s Sports and Rejecting Gender Insanity

Supporters of women’s sports and sex-based protections have reason to celebrate. The Department of Education announced Sept. 28 that it is formally rescinding the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX rule and reinstating the 2020 Title IX regulations promulgated under the first Trump administration.

Ongoing litigation has prevented the Trump administration from being able to formally rescind the illegal 2024 Biden regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations, even though the Department has been following the 2020 Trump-era Title IX regulations since January of last year.

In April 2024, the Biden administration had issued final regulations rewriting the more than 50-year-old civil rights law, Title IX, to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Essentially, it allowed boys who claim to identify as girls to participate in girls’ and women’s sports at schools that receive federal funding.

Women’s sports advocate and former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines said at the time, “52 years of progress and sex-based protections have been erased with the stroke of a pen.” She was right. Thankfully, many states agreed, and seven circuit courts temporarily blocked the Title IX rewrite, preventing it from taking effect in 26 states.

Several state superintendents and education commissioners in Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Florida also pushed back. Louisiana State Superintendent Cade Brumley stated that the Biden administration’s changes “recklessly endanger students and seek to dismantle opportunities for females.” State education leaders argued that the changes overrode state laws, compromised safety, and constituted federal overreach.

As legal challenges mounted, the Biden administration announced in December 2024 that it would withdraw the rule, citing the pending court cases and comments received during the public comment period, just weeks before President Donald Trump began his second term.

Not long after, in January 2025, a chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky struck down and vacated the Biden regulations nationwide, ruling that they were unlawful and that the Department of Education exceeded its authority. This action left the Trump-era Title IX framework in place.

Shortly after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” that defined sex as an immutable biological classification rather than a concept based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Earlier this year, the Department of Education also rescinded agreements with six school districts made under previous administrations regarding gender identity policies. Citing the January 2025 court ruling and the executive order, the department concluded that “Title IX is based on sex, and the schools did not violate the law.”

Today’s action concludes a years-long legal and political battle over the meaning of Title IX. For supporters of sex-based protections, it represents the restoration of the law’s original purpose: ensuring equal educational opportunities for women and girls.

Advocates for child protection must still work from state to state, however. As our Heritage Foundation colleague Laura Hanford explains, child-welfare workers are classifying parents as “abusive” if they treat a child according to his or her sex instead of self-proclaimed “gender.” Social science research has found that affirming a child who claims to have been born in the wrong body does not resolve mental health issues underlying a child’s sexual confusion. Adults who do not caution a child confused about his or her sex could be neglecting that child—and failing to address the true reasons for the child’s distress. Conditions such as anxiety and depression can go untreated or worsen when adults focus on advocating “gender affirmation.”

So-called gender advocates claim that children will become suicidal if adults do not affirm their children. Yet no scientific evidence supports this claim, as even the ACLU acknowledged before the Supreme Court. And contrary to activist statements, new findings from the research and advocacy organization Do No Harm show that laws banning “gender-affirming care” do not increase suicide rates.

Nevertheless, Hanford explains that some courts are removing children from their homes even when there is no evidence of actual abuse. Social workers in the foster care system, meanwhile, are affirming children’s confusion about their sex.

The Department of Education’s rule change should bolster families and state officials protecting children from making irreversible medical decisions they may come to regret. In the states, policymakers must remain vigilant.

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