Education Department Rescinds Biden Title IX Agreements With Schools
The Trump Education Department voided six Biden-era Title IX settlements with schools in four states, declaring them legally groundless after a federal court already struck down the underlying rule.
For years, school districts across four states operated under federal agreements that dictated how teachers addressed students, which bathrooms students could use, and how staff training would be conducted — all under threat of losing federal funding. On April 6, the Trump administration ended it.
The Education Department rescinded six Title IX resolution agreements that the Biden administration had imposed on school districts in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Washington, and California. Secretary Linda McMahon declared the department will now enforce Title IX as written — to protect girls from men on sports teams and preserve privacy in bathrooms — not to police how teachers address students' preferred pronouns.
The rescission lands more than a year after a federal court gutted the legal foundation for those agreements. On Jan. 9, 2025, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves vacated Biden's entire 2024 Title IX rule, ruling that the Department of Education had exceeded its statutory authority and violated the First Amendment by compelling pronoun use. The Biden administration had pressed ahead anyway, locking in transgender-related policies at the local level through enforcement settlements negotiated under funding threats rather than established law.
The six affected institutions are Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware, Delaware Valley School District in Pennsylvania, Fife School District in Washington, and three California institutions: La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified School District, and Taft College.
The agreements stretch back years. Delaware Valley's dated to 2015 under the Obama administration and required the district to permit students to use bathrooms aligned with gender identity. The Trump administration sent a rescission letter in February 2026, and the school board voted in late March 2026 to change its transgender student policies. Taft College's agreement, signed Oct. 18, 2023, followed a complaint about faculty refusing to use preferred pronouns and required faculty training and policy revisions.
Sacramento City Unified's 2024 agreement stemmed from a 2022 complaint in which a student identified as male alleged a teacher refused to use preferred pronouns and barred the student from joining boys' groups during class activities. La Mesa-Spring Valley's 2023 agreement involved a nonbinary elementary student who reported bathroom bullying and required revisions to the district's grievance process. Each settlement, however different its origins, carried the same pressure: comply or risk federal dollars.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said the agreements had "no legal foundation" and rested on "ideologically-driven interpretation" that illegally saddled districts with violations for "improper use of preferred pronouns." Richey declared the Trump administration is removing "unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior Administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda."
The shift in enforcement priorities is sharp. Where previous administrations investigated "misgendering," Richey stated the Trump administration is now investigating "allegations of girls and women being injured by men on their sports team or feeling violated by men in their intimate spaces." McMahon reinforced that message in an April 6 social media post: "While prior Admins distorted Title IX to pander to political ideology and police 'misgendering,' we're investigating allegations of girls injured by men on their sports team."
The Education Department's action fits a broader federal push. The Justice Department sued the California Department of Education on July 9, 2025 for Title IX violations tied to transgender athletes competing in girls' sports. California receives approximately $44.3 billion in federal education funding annually. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon argued at the time, "Young women should not have to sacrifice their rights to compete for scholarships, opportunities, and awards on the altar of woke gender ideology."
The Justice Department then sued Minnesota and the Minnesota State High School League on March 30, 2026 for similar violations. "Title IX was enacted over half a century ago to protect women and girls from discrimination," Dhillon stated. "The Justice Department will not stand for policies that deprive girls of their hard-earned athletic trophies."
School districts are responding in different ways. Sacramento City Unified spokesperson Al Goldberg said, "The Sacramento City Unified School District remains committed to the support of our LGBTQ+ students and staff." La Mesa-Spring Valley Superintendent David Feliciano said the rescission letter "has no effect on our district policies and procedures." Delaware Valley, by contrast, has already moved — its board voted in late March 2026 to modify transgender student policies in line with Trump administration requirements.
Education Department spokesperson Amelia Joy framed the action as course correction: "Prior Administrations regularly misinterpreted Title IX to pander to political ideology and police 'misgendering' despite not having sound legal grounds. With these actions, the Trump Administration is upholding the law and righting years of wrongs."
The rescissions follow President Trump's Jan. 20, 2025 executive order "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," which directed all federal agencies to recognize only biological sex as assigned at birth.
Critics condemned the rollback. Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women's Law Center, called it "unimaginably cruel" and stated, "There is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing." Former Office for Civil Rights supervising lawyer Nancy Potter warned: "To go back and terminate agreements and say all of the policies and procedures should be reversed as if nothing ever happened, that is very different and a very big deal."
The action amounts to a fundamental realignment of Title IX enforcement toward its original statutory purpose. A law written to protect biological women from sex discrimination was used to enforce policies that courts already rejected — with federal funding as the lever. For the school districts now receiving rescission letters, the question is no longer what the Biden administration required. It is what comes next.