THE ALASKA STORY
Sept. 29, 2026 — Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Monday that the Department of Education is formally removing the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX rule from the Code of Federal Regulations and restoring the regulatory text adopted during President Donald Trump’s first term.
The move brings the published rules into line with what the department has enforced since early 2025. A federal district court vacated the 2024 rule in January of that year, and the department says the 2020 regulations have remained in effect nationwide since then. Monday’s action clears the invalidated text from the rulebook.
“Today’s 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, which we have been enforcing since the first days of the Administration,” McMahon said.
Title IX, enacted in 1972, prohibits sex discrimination in education programs receiving federal funds. Its protections include equal athletic opportunity for women and girls. Longstanding regulations permit separate male and female teams in sports involving competitive skill or bodily contact. The statute itself does not mention gender identity or transgender athletes.
The 2024 Biden rule treated discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation as sex discrimination under Title IX. It also changed how schools were required to address sexual harassment and misconduct complaints. Courts blocked the rule in multiple jurisdictions before a Kentucky federal judge vacated it nationwide in January 2025. A separate Biden administration proposal concerning transgender athletes was never finalized.
The restored 2020 rule deals chiefly with schools’ response to sexual harassment and assault allegations. Its procedures include live hearings and cross-examination in many higher education cases, along with a narrower definition of actionable harassment. The administration’s position on teams and intimate facilities rests on its interpretation of sex under Title IX, longstanding provisions permitting separate teams, and its broader enforcement policy.
That policy has already produced investigations and settlements. In a resolution agreement with the University of Pennsylvania concerning swimmer Lia Thomas, the department required the university to change its practices and address women’s swimming records affected by Thomas’s participation.
The Supreme Court also weighed in this summer. In its June 30 decision in West Virginia v. B.P.J., the Court held that Title IX permits states to reserve girls’ and women’s school sports teams for biological females. The ruling upheld the permissibility of that restriction; it did not itself order every school in the country to adopt one.
McMahon has framed the issue around the opportunities and privacy Title IX was enacted to protect for girls and women. Critics of the rollback argue that returning to the 2020 framework weakens protections for LGBTQ students and narrows schools’ obligations in sexual misconduct cases. Supporters say the Biden rule exceeded the statute and put women’s sports and sex-separated spaces at risk.
For schools, Monday’s announcement resolves a lingering mismatch between the regulations still printed in the federal rulebook and the rules the department says are legally in force. The administration’s enforcement position was already in place; the regulatory text is now being brought up to date.
3 thoughts on “Boys will be boys: Education Department erases Biden’s Title IX rewrite allowing boys to be girls”
Oh good! I’m glad we got that problem fixed! So may Americans were suffering under the oppression of the trans athletes!
Now can we please fix the economy? Or is this really the best this administration can provide?
Again, regardless of where one stands on this issue, its remarkable we’re still talking so much about it.
29 states have already banned trans girls in girls sports, and the rest average just 2-3 kids trying to play. Its a purely symbolic issue that now affects virtually no one. There are more Cornell frat boys raping women than there are trans athletes in college sports. I’m not sure the Cornell travesty has gotten covered here.
Yes you are correct. There are bigger problems that need to be fixed. However, the Biden Administration so screwed up everything that there is so much to fix. So much of the beginning of the first term is just fixing all these mistakes that the prior administration did and that includes the economy. Of course if you are from Alaska you should know that this Administration had to re-open all the drilling areas, all the roads to vital minerals and roads to save Alaskans in bad weather. So unless you are from the lower 48 with a phony name, you should already know this. But we do have JKT’s living up here who have no clue so we can put you in that category.