The US Department of Education (DOE) announced On Monday, the House announced it would rescind previous administrations’ agreements with certain schools to interpret Title IX to include protections for transgender and gay students.
The DOE Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a press release saying it had terminated agreements with Cape Henlopen School District, Delaware Valley School District, Fife School District, La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified and Taft College. Agreements were reached under the previous Biden and Obama administrations that interpreted Title IX to extend to transgender and gay students.
The new interpretation of OCR removed Federal requirements for schools to continue training teachers on pronoun use and to allow students to use restrooms of their preferred gender identity. Explaining its decision, the OCR stated:
Resolution agreements are used by OCR to require schools to take specific actions to address violations of federal civil rights law. Previous administrations distorted the law in contrast to its clear meaning of police discrimination based on “gender identity” rather than sex, and implemented settlement agreements without any legal basis but rather based on an ideologically motivated interpretation of Title IX. They illegally charged school districts with Title IX violations for actions such as “inappropriate use of preferred pronouns” or “asking questions about a student’s preferred gender.”
The change comes after a federal court ruling in Kentucky in January governed that the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX was illegal.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richie said one of the purposes of this change is to protect female athletes, stating:
While previous administrations launched Title IX investigations based on “misgendering,” the Trump administration is investigating allegations that girls and women were violated by men on their sports teams or felt violated by men in their intimate spaces…
