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The US Department of Education has formally rescinded the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX regulations, removing rules that explicitly interpreted sex discrimination in education as including discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Department announced the change on 28 September, formally restoring the Title IX regulations introduced during Donald Trump’s first administration in 2020.
But there is an important detail behind the headline: the Biden-era rules had already been struck down by a federal court in January 2025 and were no longer in effect anywhere in the United States. This week’s move therefore formalises that situation rather than creating an entirely new legal landscape overnight.
What were the Biden Title IX rules?
Title IX is the landmark US civil-rights law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in schools, colleges and education programmes receiving federal funding.
The Biden administration’s 2024 regulations expanded the Department of Education’s interpretation of sex discrimination to expressly cover sexual orientation and gender identity, alongside changes addressing sexual harassment, pregnancy and how schools investigate discrimination complaints.
Those regulations took effect in August 2024 but faced multiple legal challenges. On 9 January 2025, a federal district court vacated the entire rule. The Department subsequently returned to enforcing the 2020 regulations.
What happened this week is therefore important, but slightly less dramatic than some headlines might suggest: the administration has now removed the defunct 2024 regulations from the federal rulebook and formally reinstated the 2020 framework.
What does this mean for LGBTQ+ students?
It does not mean that every legal protection available to LGBTQ+ students in America has suddenly disappeared.
Title IX itself remains law. State and local anti-discrimination laws may provide additional protections, and questions about how federal sex-discrimination law applies to sexual orientation and gender identity can still be litigated in court.
What has changed is the federal Department of Education’s regulatory position. Its rules no longer contain the Biden administration’s explicit language treating discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as forms of sex discrimination under Title IX.
The Trump administration argues that the 2024 rule exceeded the Department’s legal authority and says reinstating the 2020 framework restores Title IX to what it regards as its original purpose. LGBTQ+ organisations and civil-rights advocates take the opposite view, arguing that removing the explicit language leaves LGBTQ+ students with weaker federal administrative protections.
So why does the decision matter now?
Because regulations do more than generate court battles. They tell schools what the federal government believes they must do to comply with the law and how the Department of Education intends to enforce it.
The September decision makes that federal position considerably clearer.
So the real headline is not that LGBTQ+ protections vanished overnight on 28 September. It is that the US federal education rulebook now formally reflects a narrower interpretation of Title IX than the one adopted by the Biden administration.
And for LGBTQ+ students, schools and campaigners, the legal argument over what Title IX ultimately requires is unlikely to end here.
