Just three months before the presidential election, President Biden overhauled the gender equality law known as Title IX went into effect, expanding protections for transgender students and changing how colleges respond to sexual misconduct reports.

But those changes, what are they already waiting in 26 states, they are likely on the chopping block once President-elect Donald Trump takes office early next year.

Experts predict the president-elect’s administration won’t wait long before starting the long process of changing Title IX regulations again. This administration’s rule is likely to mirror regulations enacted during Trump’s first term, but some speculate that this iteration will be even more conservative, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ students, than the 2020 rule.

Trump’s record

The Trump administration released new regulations dictating colleges’ 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 granted to people accused of sexual harassment and assault. Under Trump-era regulations, colleges and universities have been mandated to hold live hearings, including allowing complainants to be questioned, in sexual misconduct investigations. Institutions were also prohibited from using the single-investigator model, where the same campus official acts as both the investigator and adjudicator in a case.

Those regulations were praised by those who argued that fairness in the Title IX process it is imperative that sexual misconduct cases reach a fair and just outcome, and for conservative lawyers concerned about the negative effects of false accusations, which are estimated to make up between 2 and 8 percent of all reported sexual assault reports based on various research studies.

On the other hand, victims’ rights advocates strongly opposed rule, arguing that the regulations made it harder for survivors to report harassment and that live hearings could traumatize victims of sexual violence.

What has changed since then?

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

President Biden’s Title IX Rulewhich was only finalized last April and went into effect in August, ended the live hearing requirement and added several new protections, including clarifying that LGBTQ+ and pregnant and parenting students are all protected from discrimination under Title IX.

New protections for transgender students, which include allowing people to use bathrooms that match their gender identity, have sparked the most reactions from Republicans. Lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups argued that by giving transgender women access to women’s restrooms, they made cisgender women less safe, undermining the intent of Title IX. (The little research that exists on this topic actually indicates public safety increases when transgender students can use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity.)

A series of lawsuits challenged the rule, ultimately leading to injunctions blocking the Department of Education from applying it to over 670 institutions. These ordinances made the already complex rule more difficult for colleges to enforce and created a patchwork of Title IX policies across the country.

Still in the works is an athletics rule that would prohibit blanket bans that prevent transgender students from playing on a sports team that aligns with their gender identity. The proposed rule, released in April 2023created opportunities to make guidelines based on age and sport. That rule it has since been postponed. The Washington Post reported in March that the athletics rule was split from the broader rule, in part because Biden was worried about how his politics would play out in the election.

What Trump said

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

trump card he sworein his Madison Square Garden rally days before the election to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools” and prevent people assigned male at birth from playing on women’s sports teams. On Joe Rogan’s podcast right before the election, Vice President-elect JD Vance alleged those middle- and upper-class white teenagers choose to identify as transgender to differentiate themselves when applying to elite universities.

Plan to decommissions the Department of Education it would certainly impact Title IX. Some Motions abolishing the department would move the agency responsible for investigating claims that institutions have mishandled Title IX complaints or otherwise fostered a hostile learning environment based on a student’s gender to the Department of Justice. (The Office for Civil Rights is also responsible for investigating disability discrimination as well as anti-Semitism on campus, among other areas of federal law.)

Betsy DeVos, Trump’s first-term education secretary, also said in an interview with EdWeek that Title IX — specifically eliminating the participation of trans students in women’s sports — should be among Trump’s top education priorities this quarter.

What’s next?

As the senior community prepares for another Trump administration, many experts are waiting to see whom he appoints to lead the Office of Civil Rights and the general department. That person will oversee the enforcement of Title IX rules and any effort to rewrite them. Other key areas to watch include:

The rights of transgender students

Experts on both sides of the issue expect Trump to announce plans to overhaul and overhaul 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 anticipates that the strong anti-transgender rhetoric that has been evident in Trump’s messaging this election season could indicate what he plans to implement.

“We expect early on that Trump will issue some sort of executive order or statement indicating that the administration will begin the rulemaking process to invalidate the Biden rule and go even further to redefine gender in a way that excludes trans and nonbinary from shelters,” she said. “I think they’re going to go so far as to redefine gender under Title IX to have a very binary definition.”

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

The future of the trans athlete rule is also uncertain, as 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 thinks it’s unlikely to move forward.

Reintroduction of due process protections

Trump’s new rule, whenever it comes, will likely reinstate due process provisions for accused students.

“Many other changes will no doubt be seriously considered. However, these areas are most likely to receive relatively immediate attention because they are considered to have the greatest impact on the fairness and defense of campus adjudications,” said T. Markus Funk. In Ed. UPPER in an email. Funk is a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, which has advocated for due process in Title IX cases, including an opinion piece for In Ed. UPPER.

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

Asked about the administration’s plans for Title IX, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition team, gave a default answer that has appeared in dozens of publications since the election: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made in the campaign. He will deliver.”

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

“It’s difficult to even begin to determine what civil rights look like in higher education or even K-12 education if the Department of Education is completely eliminated,” Vitchers said. “What we’ve seen so far are big claims … with no plan on how that’s going to be done and how things like enforcement of civil rights laws like Title IX … (will) be managed. All the statements were very vague and naturally this will cause a lot of fear and confusion for students and higher education administrators.”