Eight different courts looked at the Biden administration's rewrite of Title IX. Eight courts blocked it. Not a single one — not one — upheld it.
On Monday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon made it official.
"Now it's out, done, rescinded," McMahon told Greta Van Susteren on Newsmax's "The Record."
The Biden Education Department rewrote Title IX — the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded education — to expand the definition of sex to include gender identity. The practical effect was that schools receiving federal money were expected to allow biological males into girls' locker rooms and sports, or risk losing funding. It also weakened due-process protections for students accused of sexual misconduct on campus.
The rule never had a clean day in court. Judges in state after state issued injunctions, and by the time Biden left office, the regulation was blocked in more than half the country. The Trump administration didn't wait around to see if it could be salvaged.
"Today's rulemaking clears the Biden Administration's illegal rewrite of Title IX from the Code of Federal Regulations and restores the commonsense language promulgated in the first Trump Administration, which we have been enforcing since the first days of the Administration," McMahon said in a statement announcing the formal rescission.
The Education Department restored the 2020 Trump-era regulation to the Code of Federal Regulations — the version that reads Title IX the way Congress wrote it in 1972. Sex means sex. McMahon told Van Susteren the change gives clarity to students, teachers, schools, and parents. "Everyone now knows what the rule is and how everyone is going to abide by it."
The National Women's Law Center, through Senior Director of Education Justice Shiwali Patel, raised concerns about protections for students facing sexual harassment and assault. This is the same organization that enthusiastically supported the Biden rule that gutted due-process rights for accused students — the very procedural safeguards that protect anyone facing allegations of misconduct. Their concern for student safety is apparently conditional on who's being protected.
McMahon also pointed to broader campus reforms, noting that 30 percent of surveyed students said violence to stop campus speech was acceptable. "Let's have free speech, debate everything on college campuses," she said. "Isn't that what universities are about?" House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Tim Walberg, R-Mich., has moved 10 bills from committee as part of the broader effort, and five agencies have signed interagency agreements to coordinate the administration's education agenda.
The Biden Title IX rule was supposed to be the crown jewel of progressive education policy — a permanent structural change that would outlast its authors. It lasted about two years. Eight courts rejected it. Zero upheld it. The Trump administration pulled it from the federal register on the way out the door.
McMahon told Van Susteren she wouldn't ask for anyone's vote yet. She didn't need to. The scoreboard speaks for itself.