The U.S. Education Department announced Monday it has scrapped agreements established by previous administrations with five school districts and a college, which aimed to safeguard the rights and protections of transgender students.
The decision means the department will cease to enforce these pacts, which required schools to adhere to federal civil rights law.
The affected institutions include Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware, Fife School District in Washington, Delaware Valley School District in Pennsylvania, and La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified, and Taft College in California.
Under the Biden and Obama administrations, Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, was interpreted as encompassing protections for transgender and gay students.
In contrast, the Trump administration has penalized institutions that sought to accommodate students based on their gender identity.
It has launched legal challenges in California and Minnesota concerning state policies allowing transgender students to participate in interscholastic sports, and initiated civil rights investigations into institutions regarding their policies on transgender students.
Trans rights crackdown
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping bans targeting trans Americans over the last year.
During his State of the Union address in February, Trump used a teenager’s story to call for a ban on states and schools allowing transgender and nonbinary students to socially transition without parental consent, in what civil rights groups have called “forced outing” that endangers vulnerable children.
Sage Blair’s mother, Michele, sued the Appomattox County School Board in 2023 over allegations that the district did not disclose information that Sage was identifying as male.
Michele has claimed that the school’s alleged withholding of that information led to Sage running away from home and experiencing abuse.
“Surely we can all agree, no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” Trump said in his remarks.
“We must ban it and we must ban it immediately.”
Trump has taken a particularly hard line since returning to office in 2025, casting the gender identity of transgender people as a lie and issuing multiple executive orders limiting their rights.
One Trump directive stated that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female. Another sought to exclude transgender athletes from female sports.
The Supreme Court already has signaled sympathy toward some of Trump’s efforts.
It let Trump ban transgender people from the military and bar passport applicants from selecting the sex reflecting their gender identities for the document.
About the Author
