Biden Admin Finalizes Title IX Rules on Sexual Discrimination in Schools as Third Deadline Approaches

A teacher waves to her students as they get off the bus at Carter Traditional Elementary School in Louisville, Ky., on Jan. 24, 2022. Jon Cherry/Getty Images

The Biden administration’s Department of Education has submitted its proposed Title IX reforms to the White House for approval, ahead of a pending March deadline for the long-awaited rules promised during President Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign.

The proposed changes to Title IX, the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination at federally-funded schools, are expected to outline how schools are to respond to sexual abuse and misconduct, as well as how the Biden administration will approach protections for students who identify as a gender that is different to their sex and their access to women’s sports.

Then-candidate Joe Biden promised his supporters that he would quickly alter the Trump administration’s Title IX regulations if he was elected to the White House.

On Friday, the department announced that it had sent its proposals for Title IX laws to the Office of Management and Budget for review.

If approved by the president’s budget office, the reforms will see an expansion to former Education Secretary Betsy Devos’s definition of sexual misconduct. Ms. Devos also made sure schools performed live hearings during investigations into sexual misconduct or discrimination.

The announcement is a welcome and long-awaited step toward President Biden’s America.

LGBT students and student survivors of sexual assault have been urging the Biden administration to quickly act to make changes to Title IX, particularly since its initial deadline arrived in May last year without a proposal. The department in December promised to finalize the regulations by March this year, which will be the third deadline for the reforms.

In addition to the changes to Title IX, the department has also said that it will be introducing another proposal addressing rules for student athletes who identify as transgender—also by the March deadline.

LGBT advocacy groups, with the support of the Democratic Women’s Caucus and Congressional Equality Caucus in Congress, have eagerly been waiting for details of the Biden administration’s sports gender policies, hoping that the reforms will include blanket bans for federally-funded schools that ban individuals who identify as transgender from participating in women’s sports outlined in April.

Included in that proposal were also rules allowing school and college sports to restrict trans-identifying students from participating on the condition that educators act to minimize harm to trans-identifying students as well as adhering to any other guidelines issued by the department.

The April update did not outline details of how the Biden administration proposed to strengthen protections for student survivors of sexual assault, or protections for LGBT students.

After the White House budget office, the Title IX proposal will also have to be reviewed by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. That review could take up to 90 days.

The department told gender policy news outlet “The 19th” in December that it had received more than 240,000 public comments on its Title IX rule proposals in spring, and 150,000 comments on its gender in sports policy.