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title ix
Democratic State AGs Vow to Fight Trump's Attacks on Transgender People
"We will not let the president turn back the clock or deter us from upholding California values," said Rob Bonta, the state's attorney general.
Feb 05, 2025
Fifteen Democratic state attorneys issued a joint statement Wednesday vowing to protect access to gender-affirming healthcare amid the Trump administration's attacks on transgender people, which include a new executive order aiming to ban trans girls and women from competing on female sports teams.
"We stand firmly in support of healthcare policies that respect the dignity and rights of all people," the attorneys general said in a statement decrying Republican President Donald Trump's January 28 executive order banning federal support for gender-affirming care—which the president described as "chemical and surgical mutilation"—for young adults and minors under the age of 19.
"Healthcare decisions should be made by patients, families, and doctors, not by a politician trying to use his power to restrict your freedoms," the statement continues. "Gender-affirming care is essential, lifesaving medical treatment that supports individuals in living as their authentic selves."
"The Trump administration's recent executive order is wrong on the science and the law," the attorneys general asserted. "Despite what the Trump administration has suggested, there is no connection between 'female genital mutilation' and gender-affirming care, and no federal law makes gender-affirming care unlawful. President Trump cannot change that by executive order."
"State attorneys general will continue to enforce state laws that provide access to gender-affirming care, in states where such enforcement authority exists, and we will challenge any unlawful effort by the Trump administration to restrict access to it in our jurisdictions," they added.
The attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Nevada, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin signed the statement.
"California supports the rights of transgender youth to live their lives as their authentic selves," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement Wednesday. "We will not let the president turn back the clock or deter us from upholding California values."
"I understand that the president's executive order on gender-affirming care has created some confusion," Bonta added. "Let me be clear: California law has not changed, and hospitals and clinics have a legal obligation to provide equal access to healthcare services."
The statement from the 15 attorneys general came on the same day that Trump signed an executive order titled "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" that directs the Department of Education—which the president has vowed to abolish—to notify school districts that allowing transgender girls and women to compete on female teams violates Title IX, the federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education.
The executive order also directs the administration to "convene representatives of major athletic organizations and governing bodies, and female athletes harmed by such policies," and "convene state attorneys general to identify best practices in defining and enforcing equal opportunities for women to participate in sports and educate them about stories of women and girls who have been harmed by male participation in women's sports."
Wednesday's directive is the latest salvo in Trump's war on transgender people, which includes a day one executive order declaring that only two genders exist, another order advocating action against educators who "facilitate the social transition of a minor," a reinstatement of his first-term ban on new military enlistment by trans people—who, according to the White House, cannot lead an "honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle"—nominating a transphobe to head the Justice Department's civil rights office, and scrubbing all mention of transgender people and issues from federal agency websites.
Trans people and their allies are fighting back. Lawsuits have been filed
challenging restrictions on access to gender-affirming healthcare and the transfer of transgender women inmates to men's prisons. On Wednesday, a federal judge appointed by former Republican President Ronald Reagan temporarily blocked federal prisons from moving transgender women to men's facilities and cutting off their access to hormone therapy, citing the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. At least two federal judges have also issued temporary restraining orders on Trump administration efforts to freeze funding for federal agencies and programs.
Protests in defense of gender-affirming healthcare and other trans rights have also taken place at hospitals and other locations across the country as Trump and allies including Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk pressure the U.S. Treasury Department to defund any programs specifically helping transgender and other LGBTQ+ people.
"The protection of marginalized communities will not come solely from elected officials or bureaucratic processes—it will come from sustained, organized resistance," trans rights activist Erin Reed wrote Wednesday. "History shows that real power lies not in centralized institutions but in the collective action of those who refuse to be divided."
"Authoritarian governments rely on fragmentation, banking on the idea that the public will see themselves as isolated rather than interconnected," Reed added. "As protests grow and solidarity strengthens across movements, the coming months may test just how powerful a unified public can be."
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Trump OKs Discrimination Against Transgender Students With Title IX Rollback
"Schools must step up to protect students in the absence of adequate federal guidance," said one advocate.
Jan 31, 2025
A "Dear Colleague" letter sent by the U.S. Department of Education to K-12 schools and colleges will leave transgender students without the anti-discrimination protections that were introduced under former President Joe Biden, warned advocates on Friday.
The letter informed schools that effective immediately, the department is returning to Title IX rules that were in place under the first Trump administration, protecting students from discrimination "on the basis of biological sex"—not gender identity, sexual orientation, or pregnancy status.
The updated rules, said one DOE official, are aimed at correcting an "egregious slight to women and girls," as the administration characterized protections for transgender and nonbinary students.
The Trump administration and Republican lawmakers have been intensely focused on stopping transgender students from participating in women's sports in college and high school. Biden's rules, unveiled last April, stopped short of requiring schools to allow students to play on teams that correspond with their gender identity.
But Emma Levine, manager of the advocacy group Know Your IX, said the rollback of Biden's guidance will put students across the country at "greater risk of harassment and discrimination."
Biden's guidance had been on hold in 26 states as Republican attorneys general have challenged the rules in court.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Kentucky struck down Biden's rules, saying protections for transgender students under the 1972 anti-discrimination law rendered the measure "meaningless."
Levine said Friday that "schools must step up to protect students in the absence of adequate federal guidance," and Massachusetts Secretary of Education Patrick Tutwiler was quick to call on schools in the state to continue ensuring all students are protected from harassment and discrimination.
"It is incumbent on schools and school administrators to create a culture in which all students feel safe, supported, and fully included, including in athletics," said Tutwiler. "I am proud that in Massachusetts our state constitution has strong, comprehensive protections for LGBTQ+ students who deserve to live and learn as their full, authentic self."
Under the 2020 Title IX rules that the DOE is returning to, schools were also informed Friday that the Trump administration will once again limit schools' liability in sexual assault cases and afford expanded rights to students accused of assault and harassment.
During his first term, Trump introduced Title IX requirements for schools to hold live hearings in which students accused of misconduct and those who accused them could cross-examine one another through lawyers. The rules also narrowed the definition of harassment and placed some misconduct cases outside of a school's jurisdiction.
"The 2020 Title IX rule fails students," said Levine. "This is an incredibly disappointing decision that will leave many survivors of sexual violence, LGBTQ+ students, and pregnant and parenting students without the accommodations critical to their ability to learn and attend class safely."
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In 'Attack on Trans Students,' Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden's Title IX Protections
The Republican judge cited the Supreme Court's recent decision that stripped federal agencies of their regulatory power.
Jan 10, 2025
In a decision that was partially underpinned by the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of a 40-year-old legal precedent last year, a federal judge in Kentucky on Thursday struck down President Joe Biden's expanded protections for transgender youths and other vulnerable students, saying the administration overstepped in introducing the rules.
Chief Judge Danny C. Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky ruled that the Education Department did not have the authority to expand the protections provided by Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which since 1972 has prohibited sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.
The ruling applies to the new definition in Title IX that was proposed by the department last April, which prohibited "discrimination on the basis of sex stereotypes, sex-related characteristics (including intersex traits), pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity."
Right-wing activists and politicians objected in particular to the protections for gender identity.
The rules stopped short of requiring schools to allow transgender students to play on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity—a key fixation of the far right—but required schools and staffers to accept students' identities on a daily basis, for example by calling them by their preferred pronouns rather than according to their sex assigned at birth.
The rules have been blocked in 26 states as Republican leaders in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and other states have filed legal challenges.
In his ruling, Reeves, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote that "the entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex."
"Throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless," he said.
Reeves wrote that "the final rule and its corresponding regulations exceed the department's authority," citing Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court case in which the court's right-wing majority overturned the so-called Chevron doctrine. The legal precedent held that judges should defer to federal agencies' reasonable interpretation of a law if Congress has not specifically addressed the issue at hand.
The judge also rejected the Education Department's position that protections for transgender people against workplace discrimination—which were established in 2020 in the Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia—should also apply in schools that receive federal funding.
At Law Dork, journalist Chris Geidner wrote that Reeves rejected "Bostock's application to Title IX and [cited] his newfound authority in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo to determine 'the statute's single, best meaning' himself."
"As such, he took that authority to decide what Title IX means, the department's view notwithstanding, and set aside the rule," wrote Geidner.
Reeves also wrote that requiring teachers and schools to use students' preferred pronouns and names "offends the First Amendment" and violates the free speech rights of teachers.
That assertion, said Jennifer Berkshire, author of The Education Wars, "really shows you how fake the rhetoric of 'parents rights' is."
"The idea that using a student's preferred pronouns is in any way an imposition on teachers is patently absurd," added Jonathan Cohn of Progressive Massachusetts. "If you can handle using nicknames, you can handle correct pronouns."
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, said the judge turned "longstanding legal precedent on its head in a direct, disproportionate attack on trans students," and noted that the harm caused by the ruling will extend beyond transgender students.
"Today's decision displays extraordinary disregard for students who are most vulnerable to discrimination and are in the most need for federal protections under the Title IX rule," said Goss Graves. "The Biden administration's Title IX rule is essential to ensure that all students—including survivors of sexual assault and harassment, pregnant and parenting students, and LGBTQI+ students—are able to learn in a safe and welcoming environment. With these protections already removed in some states, students who experience sexual assault have had their complaints dismissed, or worse, been punished by their schools after reporting; pregnant students have been unfairly penalized for taking time off to give birth to a child; and LGBTQI+ students have faced vicious bullying and harassment just for being who they are."
Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of the LGBTQ rights group GLSEN, told The New York Timesthat the ruling "shows a stunning indifference to marginalized youth facing harassment and discrimination, as well as hardworking school administrators and principals who are working to build safer learning environments for their increasingly diverse student populations."
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