On the other hand, LGBTQ+ advocates and civil rights organizations condemned the ruling, calling it an attack on transgender students and a setback for gender equity. They argued that the Biden Title IX changes were necessary to protect all students from discrimination and harassment.
“This ruling is a devastating blow to the progress we have made in ensuring that all students, regardless of gender identity, can learn in a safe and supportive environment,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign. “Transgender students deserve the same opportunities and protections as their peers, and this ruling puts those protections at risk.”
Advocates vowed to continue fighting for the rights of transgender students and to push for policies that promote inclusion and equity in education.
It remains to be seen what the future holds for Title IX regulations and how colleges and universities will navigate the changing legal landscape. In the meantime, the ruling has left many in the higher education community uncertain about how to proceed and what the implications will be for their campuses.
As the legal battle over Title IX continues, it is clear that the issue of gender equity in education will remain a contentious and complex issue for the foreseeable future.
“They betrayed the original intent of Title IX by removing longstanding protections that ensured fairness for women and girls.”
Representative Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that Biden’s proposed rewrite “would have undermined safety, freedom and fairness for women.”
Meanwhile, advocates for LGBTQ+ students and those who experience harassment or sexual violence described the ruling as an attack on trans students and others that would impact their educations.
“With these protections already removed in some states, students who experience sexual assault have had their complaints dismissed, or worse, been punished by their schools after reporting; pregnant students have been unfairly penalized for taking time off to give birth to a child; and LGBTQI+ students have faced vicious bullying and harassment just for being who they are,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center.
Tracey Vitchers, executive director of It’s On Us, a national organization working to combat campus sexual assault, took issue with claims that overturning the Biden rule would protect women and girls.
“The 2020 regulations did well-documented harm to the safety of women and girls by making it more difficult to report and obtain justice if they experience sexual violence in school,” she said. “If preserving the rights and safety of women and girls was the actual litmus test for today’s decision, the judge would have chosen to uphold Biden’s rule. Instead, the safety of women and girls is being weaponized to discriminate” against trans people.
Vitchers added that while Title IX is important, colleges are required under state and federal laws to respond to reports of harassment and address student safety.
“Institutions are going to have to find ways to be creative to uphold the rights and safety of students on their campus under this new environment,” she said. “If Title IX is going to continue to be this horrible political football it has turned into, we need to see schools invest in evidence-based approaches to sexual violence prevention, because the ultimate goal is to ensure students have an education free of sexual violence.”
Jessica Blake contributed to this report.