Department Of Education Strips Title IX Protections From LGBTQ+ Students

Project 2025’s game plan is taking shape. Trans people, who make up less than 1% of the adult population, are again under attack in a culture war that grows staler by the week while grocery bills keep climbing.

In the latest, the Department of Education on Monday formally rescinded the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX rule. That rule had made clear that the law’s ban on sex discrimination covers students on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and it strengthened how schools must respond to sexual harassment and assault. In its place, the DOE restored the 2020 regulation written under Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

This is straight out of the Project 2025 playbook. The education chapter called for rescinding Biden’s Title IX rule, reinstating the DeVos regulation, and defining sex as only biological sex recognized at birth. Two of those three steps are now done.

On Monday, Sept. 28, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the administration took these steps to protect “women and girls,” the Hill reports.

“Thanks to today’s action, the published Title IX regulations faithfully reflect court orders and Congressional intent—reducing confusion for parents, students, and educational institutions. We will continue to relentlessly champion equal opportunity for all Americans and hold accountable any school or college that violates the rights, privacy, or athletic opportunities of our women and girls,” McMahon said.

The Biden-era rule had already been struck down in federal court after challenges from Republican-led states, the Hill notes. So Monday’s action mostly cleaned up the paperwork. Officials “stopped short of including a definition of sex to mean identified as male or female at birth,” reports The 74, an education news outlet.

That’s coming. The department plans a forthcoming amendment to its Title IX regulations that would define sex strictly by biology at birth. McMahon previewed the change on Sunday on OutKick, Fox’s sports outlet, still crowing about owning Biden over a rule the courts had already thrown out.

“It was boys in boys’ sports and girls in girls’ sports,” McMahon said. “All of the Biden rules and regulations are being rescinded.”

But the rule McMahon is so proud to bring back has its own problems protecting the “women and girls” she and Trump claim to champion. As the 74 reports, the 2020 regulation narrowed the kinds of sexual harassment and assault complaints schools must investigate and required live hearings where accused students could respond. As reported by NewsOne, Title IX has downplayed sexual abuse and left victims unprotected. Shiwali Patel of the National Women’s Law Center said this week that the administration is ignoring survivors and instead “weaponizing Title IX to attack trans students.”

But there’s more.

On the very same Monday, the administration filed an emergency appeal asking the Supreme Court to let the Federal Bureau of Prisons enforce restrictions on gender-affirming care in federal prisons, according to SCOTUS blog. The policy would bar transgender inmates from receiving transition surgery and hormone therapy, and would take away accommodations such as wigs and makeup.

The policy, adopted in February 2026, replaced an earlier one written to carry out an executive order Trump signed shortly after his second inauguration. 

Three transgender incarcerated people sued in federal court in Washington, D.C. In August, Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth barred the bureau from enforcing the policy, and a divided D.C. Circuit panel refused to put his order on hold. The Supreme Court has given the inmates until Oct. 8 to respond.

Meanwhile, six in 10 people facing hunger say they don’t feel financially stable and are relying on food banks and nutrition programs to eat, according to a Feeding America report released Tuesday. But by all means, protect “women and girls.”

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