Education Department Rescinds Biden's 2024 Title IX Rule, Restores 2020 Trump-Era Regulations

The U.S. Department of Education formally rescinded the Biden administration's 2024 Title IX rule on Monday, September 28, and restored the regulatory text from the first Trump administration's 2020 rule. The final version is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on Tuesday, September 29, according to Just The News, which cited Politico.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the move in an interview with OutKick. "We're just acknowledging that boys and men are in boys and men's sports and girls are in theirs," McMahon said.

Courts had already invalidated the Biden rule before Monday's action. According to the Department of Education's own announcement, the 2024 rule was enjoined by eight different federal courts and later vacated by two others. The department said last month the remaining litigation over the Biden-era regulation was dismissed, clearing the way for Monday's final rule.

McMahon acknowledged as much when asked what the formal rescission actually changes, given her department has enforced the 2020 rule since January 2025. "It just gives clarification to students, teachers, schools, parents," she said. "Everyone now knows what the rule is and how everyone is going to abide by it." She did not announce a new compliance deadline for schools.

What the Biden rule did, and what's gone now

The 2024 Biden rule expanded Title IX's sex-discrimination protections to cover gender identity and sexual orientation, which the Education Department says had been used to push schools toward allowing biological males into female locker rooms, housing and, in some cases, investigate staff over pronoun usage. A separate Biden-era proposal specifically addressing transgender eligibility for athletic teams was withdrawn back in December 2024, before the broader rule was struck down.

One detail largely missing from the sports-focused coverage: restoring the 2020 rule also expands the rights of students accused of sexual misconduct in campus disciplinary proceedings, including guaranteed rights to call witnesses, have representation and appear at a live hearing, according to Politico's reporting as relayed by Just The News. Fox News, the Daily Signal, and other outlets covering McMahon's OutKick interview focused almost entirely on the sports angle and did not mention this due-process expansion.

Enforcement mechanism and Maine

The Trump administration has pursued its Title IX interpretation through funding restrictions, investigations and Justice Department referrals since taking office. The departments of Education and Justice launched a Title IX Special Investigations Team on April 4, 2025. The federal government has also sued Maine over its policy allowing transgender-identifying male athletes to compete in girls' sports.

McMahon said states like Maine, California and Minnesota that continue allowing males in girls' sports face funding consequences short of an outright cutoff. "What that means is that they don't get their funding in advance. They have to produce receipts to us," she said, describing a high-risk designation that requires recipients to document spending after the fact rather than receive funds upfront.

She pointed to the University of Pennsylvania's 2025 agreement with the department as a model of accountability. That deal required Penn to restore swimming records and titles to female athletes and issue apologies connected to Lia Thomas's participation on the women's team. "Not only were apologies extended, but the titles were then given to the women who had rightfully won," McMahon said, adding the department would evaluate other schools case by case rather than apply Penn's settlement as a template.

The case against the rollback, and its legal standing

The strongest argument against Monday's action is that it strips away a federal framework that treated harassment or discrimination based on gender identity as a form of sex discrimination, not just in sports but in bathrooms, housing and disciplinary treatment more broadly. Under the restored 2020 rule, transgender students alleging that kind of mistreatment lose the specific legal hook the 2024 rule gave them under Title IX.

This argument already lost repeatedly in federal court. Eight courts enjoined the Biden rule and two vacated it outright before all remaining litigation was dismissed last month, according to the Education Department. The rollback also follows a June 30, 2026 Supreme Court decision upholding Idaho and West Virginia laws that restrict girls' school sports to biological females, according to Zetik's reporting on the case.

Jonathan Butcher, an education policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal the rescission will give state and local officials more confidence to hold the line. "Public officials in some areas are still trying to cut parents out of their child's life over gender issues," Butcher said, adding that policymakers need to keep watching for efforts to "divide families over the issue."

The open question is what happens in states like Maine, California and Minnesota that keep their own policies in place. McMahon says funding reimbursement requirements and DOJ referrals are the enforcement tools on the table. Whether that pressure actually changes state policy, or just produces more litigation, is still unresolved.