With just three months until the presidential election, President Biden’s overhaul of gender equality law Known as Title IX It took effect by expanding protections for transgender students and changing how universities respond to reports of sexual misconduct.

But these changes already pending In 26 states, they will likely be disrupted when President-elect Donald Trump takes office early next year.

Experts predict the president-elect’s administration won’t wait long to begin the long process of reamending Title IX regulations. This administration’s rule is likely to mirror regulations adopted during Trump’s first term; but some think this iteration will be more conservative than the 2020 rule, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ students.

Trump’s Track Record

The Trump administration enacted new regulations determining universities’ responsibilities under Title IX in the spring of 2020, capping a years-long effort to roll back Obama-era Title IX changes.

The 2020 Title IX rule was most notable for the due process rights it provided to people accused of sexual harassment and assault. Under Trump-era regulations, college universities were given the authority to hold live hearings in sexual harassment investigations, including allowing cross-examination of complainants. Institutions are also prohibited from using the single investigator model, in which the same campus official serves as both investigator and arbitrator in a case.

These regulations were praised by its advocates. Fairness in the Title IX process This requirement for sexual abuse cases to reach a true and fair conclusion is also a must for conservative advocates who are concerned about the negative effects of false accusations. between 2 and 8 percent A complete list of all reported sexual assault reports based on various research studies.

On the other hand, victims’ rights advocates vehemently opposed There were regulations that suggested the rule made it harder for survivors to report abuse and that live hearings could re-traumatize victims of sexual violence.

What Has Changed Since Then

Reversing the Trump rule was a top priority for the Biden administration, which made good on that promise earlier this year.

President Biden’s Title IX ruleThe law, which was completed last April and came into force in August, ended the live hearing requirement and put LGBTQ+ and pregnant and parenting students all are protected from discrimination under Title IX.

New protections for transgender students, which include allowing individuals to use bathrooms that match their gender identity, have sparked the most backlash Reaction from Republicans. Lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups argued that by allowing transgender women access to women’s restrooms, they were making cisgender women less safe and undermining the purpose of Title IX. (The little research available on the subject actually shows this: public safety increases when transgender students can use the restroom that matches their gender identity.)

A series of lawsuits challenged the rule, eventually resulting in injunctions preventing the Department of Education from enforcing the rule. More than 670 institutions. These injunctions made enforcing the already complex rule even more difficult for universities and created a mix of Title IX policies across the country.

An athletics rule is still in the works that would ban blanket bans that prevent transgender students from playing on a sports team that aligns with their gender identity. The proposed rule is Released in April 2023created opportunities to create age- and sport-based guidelines. this rule has since been postponed. Washington Post reported in March He said the rule regarding athletics was separated from the larger rule because he was concerned about how Biden’s politics would impact the election.

What Did Trump Say?

Title IX didn’t come up much on the campaign trail, but Trump and many of his allies have repeatedly attacked transgender people and Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for the LGBTQ+ community.

Embers sworeat a Madison Square Garden rally days before the election to “banish the transgender craze from our schools” and prevent people assigned male at birth from playing on women’s sports teams. Vice President-elect JD Vance on Joe Rogan’s podcast just before the election requested o white middle and upper middle class youth choose to identify as transgender To differentiate themselves when applying to elite universities.

being planned Disband the Ministry of National Education It will certainly impact Title IX. Some offers Removing the department would transfer to the Department of Justice the agency responsible for investigating allegations that institutions mishandled Title IX complaints or otherwise fostered a hostile learning environment based on a student’s gender. (The Office for Civil Rights is also responsible for investigating disability discrimination as well as campus antisemitism, among other areas of federal law.)

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s first-term secretary of education, also said: In his interview with EdWeek I think that eliminating Title IX, especially transgender students’ participation in women’s sports, should be among Trump’s top education priorities this term.

What’s Next?

As the higher education community prepares for another Trump administration, many experts I’m waiting to see Who did he appoint to lead the Office of Civil Rights and the overall department? This individual will oversee enforcement of Title IX rules and any efforts to rewrite them. Other important areas to watch include:

Rights of transgender students

Experts on both sides of the issue expect Trump to announce plans to review and revise Title IX regulations early in his term.

But Shiwali Patel, senior director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women’s Law Center, said she expects the strong anti-transgender rhetoric evident in Trump’s messaging this election season could indicate what he plans to implement.

“We expect Trump to issue some sort of executive order or statement early, a signal that the administration will begin the rulemaking process to circumvent the Biden rule and go even further to redefine gender to exclude transgender and gender non-binary people from protections.” he said. “I think they will go so far as to redefine gender in Title IX to make it binary.”

That’s what organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the organizations suing to block the Biden regulations, are hoping for, if not more immediate action. Matt Bowman, ADF’s senior counsel and director of regulatory practice, said he is hopeful that the courts that temporarily blocked Biden’s regulations will block them permanently. At this point, he said, states should revert to Trump-era regulations rather than maintain any part of the 2024 rule because “there is no redeemable part of the illegal Biden Title IX rule. They are all indoctrinated with this dangerous gender ideology.”

The future of the transgender athlete rule is also uncertain because it likely won’t be finalized before Biden leaves office. Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, an advocacy and research organization focused on sexual violence on campus, said she believes it’s unlikely to move forward.

Reinstating due process protections

Trump’s new rule will likely reinstate due process provisions for accused students when appropriate.

“Many other changes will undoubtedly be seriously considered. However, these areas are likely to attract relatively immediate attention because they are seen as the areas that most directly impact the fairness and defensibility of campus decisions,” T. Markus Funk said. Inside Higher Education in an email. Funk is a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, which advocates for due process in Title IX cases. A column for Inside Higher Education.

However, making changes to the regulation will take a long time, at least considering past examples. The Trump and Biden administrations finalized their rules in May and April, respectively, of their final year in office, after reviewing hundreds of thousands of comments in both cases. Patel said there is no way to legally avoid the rulemaking process or make any changes to the existing Title IX rule outside of that process.

When asked about the administration’s plans for Title IX, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition team, offered a canned response that has appeared in dozens of publications since the election: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a landslide. He was given the authority to fulfill the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”

Vitchers said the lack of clarity about plans for the Department of Education, the Office for Civil Rights, and Title IX in particular — combined with existing confusion over the Biden rule, which has been blocked on many campuses — is likely to cause problems for institutions in the coming months. years.

“It’s hard to even begin to figure out what civil rights will look like in higher education and even K-12 education when the Department of Education is completely eliminated,” Vitchers said. “What we’ve seen so far is big allegations…no plan for how to do this and how to handle things like enforcement of civil rights laws like Title IX. “All the wording is very vague, which will naturally cause a lot of fear and confusion for students and administrators in higher education.”