Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Monday that the department is formally removing the Biden administration’s vacated 2024 Title IX regulations from the federal rulebook and reinstating the first Trump administration’s 2020 framework for handling sex-discrimination and sexual-misconduct cases.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Education is formally rescinding the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX regulations and restoring the regulatory framework adopted during President Donald Trump’s first term, completing an administrative reversal that had already largely occurred after a federal court struck down the Biden rule nationwide in January 2025.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the action Monday, saying the change will remove the invalidated 2024 regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations and make the department’s published rules conform with the framework it has been enforcing since Trump returned to office.
The move “clears the Biden Administration’s illegal rewrite of Title IX” and restores the earlier rule’s language, McMahon said, according to The Hill.
“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,” McMahon said.
The final regulation is expected to be formally published Tuesday.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” in education programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance.
The Biden administration issued a sweeping revision of Title IX regulations in April 2024 that took effect that August. Among other changes, the rule stated that discrimination on the basis of sex included discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The Biden administration said at the time that its interpretation reflected Supreme Court precedent and was intended to strengthen protections against sex-based harassment and discrimination for LGBTQ students as well as pregnant and parenting students.
Republican-led states and conservative organizations challenged the rule in multiple federal courts.
On Jan. 9, 2025, U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky vacated the regulations in their entirety in Tennessee v. Cardona, concluding that the Education Department had exceeded its statutory authority and that portions of the rule conflicted with Title IX. The decision rendered the 2024 regulations ineffective nationwide.
The Education Department subsequently announced on Jan. 31, 2025, that it would return to enforcing the 2020 Title IX rule issued during Trump’s first administration. The department’s Office for Civil Rights has since treated the 2020 regulations as the operative federal standard.
Monday’s action therefore does not represent the first practical return to the 2020 framework. Rather, it formally removes the already-vacated Biden rule from the regulatory code and restores the earlier language so the published regulations match the rules currently being enforced.
McMahon characterized the change as “a full return to Title IX.”
“It’s exactly how we enforce Title IX,” McMahon told OutKick. “It was boys in boys sports and girls in girls sports, and now the Biden rules and regulations are being rescinded and it is a full return to the Trump administration’s Title IX ruling, as has been upheld by many courts.”
She said formally completing the regulatory change would provide greater certainty for schools.
“It just gives clarification to students, teachers, schools, parents — everyone now knows what the rule is and how everyone is going to abide by it,” McMahon said.
The 2020 regulations are particularly significant for how colleges and universities investigate allegations of sexual harassment and sexual misconduct.
The framework requires schools to use defined grievance procedures in Title IX sexual-harassment cases and includes procedural protections for both complainants and accused students. At colleges and universities, the regulations require live hearings in covered cases and provide for questioning of parties and witnesses through advisers rather than direct questioning by the parties themselves.
The regulations also require schools to presume that an accused person is not responsible for alleged misconduct until the grievance process reaches a determination and require decision-makers to be separate from the investigators handling the allegations.
Supporters of the 2020 framework have argued that those requirements provide stronger due-process protections for students accused of misconduct.
Critics have argued that the process can make reporting sexual assault more difficult for survivors and can discourage students from pursuing complaints.
The Biden administration’s 2024 regulations modified portions of that framework, including how schools define and respond to sex-based harassment and the procedures institutions may use when resolving complaints.
Its rule also provided that discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation could constitute prohibited sex discrimination.
The Trump administration rejected that interpretation after taking office in January 2025.
The Education Department said at the time that Title IX would once again be enforced “on the basis of biological sex,” and the administration has since used that interpretation in investigations involving school athletics, bathrooms, locker rooms and other sex-separated facilities.
Monday’s final regulation itself, however, does not formally define the word “sex” in Title IX as biological sex, according to Politico.
Instead, the regulation rescinds the Biden-era text and restores the 2020 rule while its preamble discusses the court rulings that invalidated the 2024 regulations.
That distinction is important because the administration is separately considering regulatory action that would expressly define sex under Title IX using a biological-sex standard, Politico reported.
Trump has already directed federal agencies to use biological-sex definitions through executive action. A January 2025 executive order established federal definitions of male and female, and a separate February 2025 order directed the Education Department to enforce Title IX in connection with sex-separated athletic competition.
The administration has since pursued Title IX disputes with schools, universities and state education systems over policies allowing transgender girls or women to participate on female athletic teams or use female facilities.
The Education Department says Title IX requires federally funded institutions to provide equal athletic opportunities on the basis of sex and has made enforcement involving women’s sports one of its Office for Civil Rights priorities.
The relationship between Monday’s repeal and school sports is more limited than McMahon’s remarks might suggest.
The Biden administration’s 2024 final Title IX rule addressed gender identity as part of its broader sex-discrimination framework, but it did not finalize a separate Biden proposal governing eligibility for male and female athletic teams. The Education Department had explicitly said in the 2024 rule that the athletics proposal would be handled separately.
That proposed athletics regulation was never finalized before Biden left office.
The current administration’s restrictions involving transgender participation in girls’ and women’s sports therefore rest on its broader interpretation of Title IX, Trump’s executive actions and separate enforcement decisions rather than solely on Monday’s regulatory repeal.
Supporters of the repeal said removing the Biden-era language was necessary even though the rule had already been invalidated by the courts.
Bob Eitel, president of the Defense of Freedom Institute and a former Education Department official who helped develop the 2020 regulations, said the Biden rule “deserved the gutting that it received in the courts.”
Conservative education groups have argued that the Biden administration attempted to expand Title IX beyond the language Congress enacted and that the 2020 regulations more closely follow the statute while providing stronger procedural protections to students accused of misconduct.
The Education Department has made the same argument, repeatedly describing the 2024 regulations as exceeding the agency’s authority.
Opponents of the Trump administration’s approach say the policy reversal removes federal protections for transgender students and could also make it more difficult for survivors of sexual harassment and assault to pursue complaints.
“Sexual harassment and assault continue to be pervasive in schools and, to the fullest extent possible, we should be working to enforce the laws that protect student survivors of sexual violence,” said Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center.
“Yet, Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Trump administration have decided to ignore what survivors need, instead weaponizing Title IX to attack trans students,” Patel said.
The National Women’s Law Center has separately argued that the administration’s current enforcement policy excludes transgender students from protections the organization believes Title IX should provide and diverts resources from sexual-harassment investigations.
The legal debate over LGBTQ protections under federal civil-rights laws has been shaped in part by the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County.
In that case, the court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which governs employment discrimination, prohibits employers from discriminating against workers because they are gay or transgender.
The Biden administration relied heavily on the reasoning of Bostock when interpreting sex discrimination under Title IX.
Opponents argued that Bostock specifically interpreted Title VII’s employment provisions and did not automatically resolve how Title IX should operate in educational settings, particularly where the statute and longstanding regulations expressly permit some sex-separated programs and facilities.
The Kentucky federal court agreed with the challengers that the Education Department’s 2024 rule went beyond its statutory authority and vacated the entire regulation rather than only the provisions involving gender identity.
As a result, schools have already been operating under the restored 2020 regulations for more than a year and a half.
The Education Department’s own current Title IX guidance states that the 2024 regulations “are not effective in any jurisdiction” and that the 2020 regulations remain in effect.
Monday’s action primarily settles the remaining regulatory bookkeeping by eliminating the Biden text that remained printed in the federal regulations despite having no legal effect.
It also makes the Trump administration’s long-term direction clearer.
The department is retaining the first Trump administration’s procedures for handling sexual-harassment cases, continuing to enforce Title IX according to its interpretation of biological sex and considering additional regulations that could explicitly incorporate that definition into federal education rules.
Whether additional changes survive future legal challenges will depend on the language of those regulations and subsequent court decisions.
For schools and universities receiving federal funding, however, the immediate federal rule is no longer in doubt: the 2024 Biden regulations have been formally removed, and the 2020 Title IX framework is again the department’s published regulatory standard.
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