Department of Education Officially Axes Biden's 'Illegal Title IX Rewrite'
The U.S. Department of Education said Monday it has formally rescinded the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX regulation and restored the 2020 rule to the Code of Federal Regulations.
Officials described the 2024 rewrite as illegal and said the published text will now match the rule that has been enforced since early in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 barred sex discrimination in education programs that take federal money. The statute has long been the legal basis for sex-separated sports, locker rooms, and bathrooms in those schools.
The fight of the last two administrations has been over whether “sex” in that law also means gender identity.
The Biden Education Department’s 2024 rule expanded sex discrimination protections to cover gender identity.
Courts blocked that regulation. The department said eight courts enjoined it and two later vacated it. Remaining suits over the Biden-era text were dismissed last month, the department said, which opened the path for Monday’s final action.
Just 11 days into Trump’s current term, after those court losses for the 2024 rule, Department of Education officials announced they would enforce the first Trump administration’s 2020 Title IX regulations. Monday’s filing puts that 2020 language back on the books as the official code text rather than leaving schools to track enforcement memos alone.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the rulemaking clears the Biden Administration’s “illegal rewrite of Title IX from the Code of Federal Regulations and restores the commonsense language promulgated in the first Trump Administration.”
She said the published rule now tracks court orders and congressional intent, and should reduce “confusion for parents, students, and educational institutions.”
McMahon told OutKick the step is meant to make the standard unmistakable. “We’re just acknowledging that boys and men are in boys and men’s sports and girls are in theirs,” she said.
When asked what the paperwork change does if the Department of Education was already applying the 2020 rule, she said it “gives clarification to students, teachers, schools, parents.”
She did not announce a new nationwide compliance deadline. Schools, she said, should return to the Trump-era regulations.
“Title IX was set up to give everyone, including women, equal opportunity to sports. And then under the Biden regulations, many of those rights had been taken away.”
The Monday release said Biden-era civil rights staff pushed schools to let males into women’s sports and private facilities, and investigated employees over pronouns. The Trump administration said it has withdrawn those resolution agreements.
Over the past 19 months, the department listed other steps: a joint Title IX Special Investigations Team with the Justice Department; probes of state education agencies and high school federations in California, Washington, and Minnesota; and cases involving districts and colleges accused of letting males into girls’ competitions or intimate spaces.
Today, the Trump Administration is formally putting into regulation what the law has said all along: Title IX’s protections are based on SEX, not “gender identity.” https://t.co/N0K36S90Dy
— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov) September 28, 2026
Enforcement tools cited in the release include a proceeding to terminate Maine’s federal K-12 education funding and a referral of that matter to Justice; “high-risk” and reimbursement status for five Northern Virginia districts covering more than $50 million in department funds; and Justice referrals for Minnesota and California agencies after they refused resolution deals following Title IX findings.
McMahon said high-risk reimbursement status means a recipient does not get money up front and must show receipts. “We therefore can confirm that they are spending the money in ways that it should be spent,” she said, adding that states and schools which ignore Title IX can face several kinds of consequences.
The Department of Education pointed to a 2025 resolution with the University of Pennsylvania that required the school to restore sex-separated sports and facilities, return titles taken by a male swimmer, and apologize to female athletes.
McMahon said those titles went back to the women who had won them, noting that other cases would be handled as well.
A separate Biden proposal on athletic eligibility was withdrawn in December 2024. On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court upheld Idaho and West Virginia laws limiting girls’ and women’s sports to females. McMahon, asked about a national eligibility rule, said the answer is Title IX itself: “It is in law, it exists, it’s a statute, and it should be obeyed.”
MEN do not belong in WOMEN’S sports.
It’s really that simple.
— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov) September 28, 2026
The department posted a fact sheet with Monday’s final rule. Parents who say a daughter is being told to compete against a male athlete or share a locker room were told to go first to school officials, including the superintendent, and to report the situation to federal authorities.
McMahon did not give a timeline for how fast the Office for Civil Rights would step in.
Schools that receive federal aid are now on notice that the Code text matches the 2020 regulation the current administration has treated as controlling since January 2025. State policies that conflict with that reading remain the subject of investigations, funding conditions, and Justice Department referrals already in motion.
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