Trump rescinds federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people | The Wisconsin Independent
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Demonstrators advocating for transgender rights and healthcare stand outside of the Ohio Statehouse, Jan. 24, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Patrick Orsagos, File)

Update Jan. 23, 2025: In one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump has rescinded federal policies recognizing the gender identities of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, including former President Joe Biden’s regulations protecting members of those groups from discrimination in education.

A federal judge had already struck down the Biden administration’s rules earlier in January, but Trump’s Jan. 20 rescission of them means there will be no appeal.

Trump signed the executive order, titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, hours after taking the oath of office. It says that “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex have increasingly used legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to women’s workplace showers.”

In addition to rescinding the Biden era Title IX rules, the order forces the federal government to recognize only two sexes, male and female, which it defines as a state that begins at conception.

One’s gender identity, the order declares, is “disconnected from biological reality and sex” and “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.”

A federal judge has struck down President Joe Biden’s Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students nationwide as the country prepares for a Trump administration that has signaled hostility to LGBTQ+ rights.

In a decision handed down on Jan. 9, Judge Danny Reeves, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, ruled that the Biden administration’s institution of the rules exceeded the president’s constitutional authority.

The administration finalized new rules in April 2024 clarifying that Title IX’s protections against sex discrimination also apply to discrimination based on sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics. Those rules had gone into effect in August.

The Biden administration rules had already been blocked in 26 states following rulings in several lawsuits challenging them that were filed by a number of states. Reeves issued a temporary injunction in June in a lawsuit filed by Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

“The court’s ruling is yet another repudiation of the Biden administration’s relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology through unconstitutional and illegal rulemaking,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office.”

Experts had expected the Trump administration to end Biden’s Title IX rule after Trump takes office on Jan. 20 as part of anticipated efforts to roll back LGBTQ+ rights.

Prior to the federal ruling, the text of Title IX had long been interpreted as applying to LGBTQ+ students, Brian Dittmeier, the LGBTQ+ education advocacy group GLSEN’s policy director, told the American Independent.

“LGBTQ students have been recognized to be protected under Title IX for decades, but this is the first time that the regulations explicitly said claims of sexual orientation and gender identity are considered under Title IX,” he said.

Even with the ruling, and even with the Trump administration’s intentions, LGBTQ+ students can and still should seek protection from discrimination under Title IX, Dittmeier said.

The Title IX ruling isn’t the only legal decision that could impact LGBTQ+ students in the second Trump administration, however. 

Trump has promised to abolish the federal Department of Education, and though it’s unclear if that will be possible, the agency’s elimination would pose a threat to many groups of students.

The department plays a major role in enforcing federal civil rights laws in educational institutions via its Office for Civil Rights.

“We are concerned that the dismantling of the Department of Education would be disastrous for Pennsylvania students who are the most marginalized by our education system, both with regard to lack of federal enforcement of anti-discrimination laws as well as a potential defunding of education programs,” Maura McInerney, the legal director at the Education Law Center in Pennsylvania, told the American Independent.

Dittmeier reiterated that it’s important for LGBTQ+ students affected by the Title IX decision and the Trump administration’s potential actions on that front to continue to utilize the tools available to them.

The key takeaway, he said, is, “We have an incoming president who is going to try and use the bully pulpit to intimidate LGBTQ youth and their families, and at the end of the day, that does not change the material rights that people have.”

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