The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently rescinded parts of Title IX agreements that previous administrations reached with five school districts and a college, rejecting prior interpretations that had expanded the law to cover discrimination based on ‘gender identity’ rather than biological sex.
According to an April 6 press release from the department, OCR will no longer monitor or enforce the agreements, saying they had been reached “through the illegal, heavy-handed manipulation of Title IX.” Moving forward, the department says OCR will enforce Title IX in cases involving discrimination on the basis of sex, not “gender identity.”
“While previous Administrations launched Title IX investigations based on ‘misgendering,’ the Trump Administration is investigating allegations of girls and women being injured by men on their sports team or feeling violated by men in their intimate spaces,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in the release.
She touted the change as a demonstration of the Trump administration’s “commitment to uphold the law, protect our students, and restore common sense.”
“No longer will the federal government force educational institutions to violate the law or punish them for upholding it,” she continued.
According to the release, agreements between OCR and schools or school districts require educational institutions “to take specific actions to resolve noncompliance with federal civil rights law.” The department said that after previous administrations reinterpreted Title IX, school districts became “illegally saddled” with civil rights violations for using the wrong pronouns or asking about a student’s “preferred gender.”
The department stated, “Title IX protections are based on sex, therefore, these districts are not in violation of the law and are freed from these terms of the resolution agreements.”
The affected school districts and college are Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware; Delaware Valley School District in Pennsylvania; Fife School District in Washington; La Mesa-Spring Valley School District; Sacramento City Unified; and Taft College in California.