The Biden administration’s sweeping rewrite of Title IX is now officially gone. On Monday, September 28, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced a final rule that formally rescinds the 2024 regulations and restores the language written during President Trump’s first term.
McMahon did not mince words. She called the Biden rewrite illegal and said the new action clears it from the Code of Federal Regulations, restoring what she described as commonsense language.
To understand why this matters, go back to 1972. Title IX was passed to ensure that women and girls would have equal opportunities in education, and for fifty years it was understood to protect exactly that.
In 2024, the Biden administration issued a rule declaring that sex discrimination under the law also covered sexual orientation and gender identity. Critics said that stretched a statute far beyond what Congress ever wrote.
The courts agreed. In January 2025, a federal judge in Kentucky struck down the Biden rule nationwide, finding it overstepped the executive branch’s authority. He did not trim the rule. He tossed all of it.
The Trump administration declined to appeal, and it has been enforcing the earlier 2020 regulations since its first days back in office. Monday’s action simply makes the paperwork match the legal reality.
That is the part the loudest critics tend to skip. The rule they say was just taken away had already been wiped out by a federal court months before, so this is cleanup after a legal defeat, not a surprise attack.
House Education Committee Chairman Tim Walberg welcomed the move, saying the return to the 2020 regulations restores longstanding protections for women and girls and aligns policy with court precedent.
The Biden rule did more than add gender identity language. It also replaced the narrower definition of sexual harassment adopted in the first Trump term and allowed schools to use a preponderance of the evidence standard in misconduct cases.
Parents have been asking for years who gets to decide these questions, and the answer under this administration is clear. Congress writes the law, and courts interpret it. Agencies are not supposed to rewrite it on their own.
President Trump set the tone on day one, issuing an executive order that labeled the Biden-era approach gender ideology extremism. Monday’s rule is the regulatory follow-through.
