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The U.S. Department of Education announced a string of Title IX investigations Wednesday into over a dozen colleges and state and local school systems with policies that allow transgender students to play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.
The 18 investigations come just a day after the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could decide the future of transgender student athlete participation on sports teams.
“These policies jeopardize both the safety and the equal opportunities of women in educational programs and activities,” the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said in a Wednesday announcement.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement that her office is “aggressively pursuing” complaints about alleged discrimination in women’s sports, which it says is a result of transgender student participation on women’s and girls’ sports teams.
“We will leave no stone unturned in these investigations to uphold women’s right to equal access in education programs,” Richey said.
The investigations were launched into large and small public education systems and colleges, including the New York City Department of Education, Washington’s Tacoma Public Schools, and the Hawaii State Department of Education.
A handful of investigations were also launched into districts in California and Maine — states that have already been the target of Education Department investigations that resulted in U.S. Department of Justice referrals and threats to federal funding loss.
The Justice Department sued Maine following a Title IX investigation that said the state had discriminated against cisgender women and girls. However, as of last week, there have been no recent major developments in that case despite the lawsuit being announced last April, according to a Maine state attorney general office spokesperson.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in West Virginia v. B.P.Jand Little v. Hecox, in which justices were asked to weigh the constitutionality of state bans limiting transgender athlete participation on sports teams aligning with their gender identities and whether such bans violate Title IX.
While the high court’s conservative majority seemed inclined to uphold state bans, justices on both sides of the ideological spectrum questioned what their limits should be, considering the role of student age, hormone therapy and puberty blockers.
“I’ve been wondering what’s straightforward after all this discussion,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch in court on Tuesday.
The outcome of the cases could change the course of transgender students’ rights in schools, school district policies allowing or barring their participation on sports teams under Title IX, and the Education Department’s enforcement of the sex discrimination statute.
The new investigations also come as Office for Civil Rights employees have been indefinitely reinstated to their positions after the department’s rescission of their layoff notices. The employees were laid off as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to downsize the federal government and to shutter the Education Department.
The civil rights employees were put on administrative leave but were in limbo as legal challenges to the layoffs worked their way through the courts and resulted in temporary blocks. However, the Education Department abandoned its efforts last month to push some of the layoffs through, which resulted in the employees’ indefinite reinstatement as of December.
The full list of new investigations includes:
Jurupa School District (Calif.)
Placentia-Yorba School District (Calif.)
Santa Monica College (Calif.)
Santa Rosa Junior College (Calif.)
Waterbury Public Schools (Conn.)
Hawaii State Department of Education (Hawaii)
Regional School Unit 19 (Maine)
Regional School Unit 57 (Maine)
Foxborough Public Schools (Mass.)
University of Nevada, Reno (Nev.)
Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District (N.Y.)
The U.S. Supreme Court heard back-to-back oral arguments Tuesday over two cases that could determine whether transgender women and girls can play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.
The two lawsuits center on two states, Idaho and West Virginia, that have banned transgender women and girls from such teams.Idaho was the first state to implement such a restriction in 2020,and 26 other states have since passed similar laws.
The student in each lawsuit alleges that their state’s restriction violates their 14th Amendment guarantee to equal protection under the law.One of them also contends that the restriction violates Title IX, the sweeping federal law banning sex-based discrimination in federally funded colleges and K-12 schools.
Conservative politicians have championed these policies, including President Donald Trump.
Early in his second term, Trump signed an executive order that threatened to pull federal funding from and open investigations into colleges and K-12 schools that allow transgender women and girls to play on sports teams aligning with their identities.
Comments of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday and their past rulings suggest that those justices may be reluctant to strike down state laws restricting transgender students’ participation in college and K-12 sports.
Last year, the conservative majority upheld a Tennessee law barring transgender teenagers in the state from accessing puberty blockers and hormone treatments. And Brett Kavanaugh, one of the conservative justices, voiced concerns Tuesday about allowing transgender women and girls to play on the same teams as their cisgender peers.
“One of the great successes in America for the last 50 years has been the growth of women and girls sports,” Kavanaugh said.
He added that “a variety of groups” have argued that allowing transgender women and girls to participate on such teams will reverse that success.“For the individual girl who does not make the team, or doesn’t get on the stand for the medal, or doesn’t make all-league, there’s a harm there,” Kavanaugh said. “We can’t sweep that aside.”
Lawyers defending the state bans made similar comments. In defense of West Virginia’s law, state Solicitor General Michael Williams argued that “biological sex matters in athletics in ways both obvious and undeniable.”
Allowing students to participate on teams aligning with their gender identity turns Title IX into a law“that actually denies those opportunities for girls,” Williams said.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the two transgender students suing over the state policies argue that the bans deny them their constitutional rights.
Joshua Block, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Unionrepresenting the student contesting the West Virginia law,argued that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title IX are meant to “protect everyone.”
In that case, West Virginia v. B.P.J., Becky Pepper-Jackson,now a high school student,and her mother sued the state in 2021 over its ban on transgender girls participating in girls’ sports.
Pepper-Jackson has identified as a girl since 3rd grade and takes puberty blockers. She won a narrow district court injunction in July 2021 that blocked West Virginia from applying the law to her, though the judge ended up ruling in favor of the state. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in 2023 allowing her to participate in girls’ sports again.
Block argued that if there are no “physiological differences” between Pepper-Jackson and other girls, there is no reason to exclude her from girls’ sports teams.
“West Virginia’s law treats BPJ differently from other girls on the basis of sex, and it treats her worse in a way that harms her,” Block said.
In the other case, Little v. Hecox,Boise State University student Lindsay Hecox,a transgender woman, sued the state of Idaho in 2020 over its statute, arguing that it violated her constitutional rights by discriminating against transgender women.
Hecox, who receives hormone therapy to suppress testosterone and increase estrogen,scored a victory when a federal judge blocked the law in 2020. Afterward, she tried out for Boise State’s NCAA track and cross-country teams but wasn’t fast enough to make them, so she joined the university’s club soccer and running instead.
A federal appeals court partially upheld the ruling in Hecox’s case in 2024, though it asked the lower court to review the scope. However, Hecox is no longer participating in any college sports as she attempts to finish college “without the extraordinary pressures of this litigation and related public scrutiny,” according to a Supreme Court brief last year.
In September, Hecox asked for the Supreme Court to dismiss her case as moot, citing her impending graduation, her decision not to play sports in Idaho in the future, and the negative attention the case brought her. The justices said they would decide on her request after hearing oral arguments.
Many of Tuesday’s arguments focused on whether transgender women and girls would have a competitive advantage over cisgender women and girls. There is not consensus among medical experts, and there have been limited studies on the matter.
In one 2021 study, transgender women in the U.S. Air Force were faster than their cisgender peers following two years of hormone treatments, though they couldn’t complete more sit-ups or pushups.
But Joshua Safer, executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, wrote in a 2022 article for the Journal of the Endocrine Society that there “does not seem to be any reason to expect advantage for transgender people prior to puberty of or for transgender people whose gender-affirming treatment begins at the onset of puberty.”
He added that more research was needed on the topic.
In a 2024 study, researchers found transgender women who had completed at least a year of hormone therapy had higher absolute hand grip strength than cisgender women but lower relative jump height. They cautioned against “precautionary bans and sport eligibility exclusions that are not based on sport-specific (or sport-relevant) research.”
Parents rights supporters attend a rally in Simi Valley on Sept. 26, 2023.,the night before a Republican presidential primary debate.
Credit: Courtesy of Rebecca Holz / California Policy Center
Top Takeaways
A judge ruled parents have the right to know if a student expresses gender incongruence.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office applied to stay the court’s injunction.
The ruling may ultimately be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A federal judge issued a ruling Monday that strikes down California school policies aimed at preventing schools from revealing a student’s gender identity to their parents.
The class action suit, filed by California teachers and parents, hinges on whether TK-12 educators can breach a student’s confidentiality and tell parents that students are using a name or pronoun other than what they have been assigned at birth.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, of San Diego, ruled in favor of two Escondido Union School District teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who claimed that district policies “flatly prohibit teachers from respecting parents’ wishes.” The middle school teachers named district officials in the suit and said district policies violated the teachers’ constitutional free speech and religious rights.
Benitez, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote in his order granting summary judgment that California’s public schools “place a communication barrier between parents and teachers.” The judgment applies to all California public schools, not just the original North San Diego County district.
“Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence,” Benitez wrote. “Teachers and school staff have a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence.”
The suit, filed in April 2023, named California state officials, including State Superintendent Tony Thurmond, the State Board of Education and Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Benitez’s ruling references guidance that the California Department of Education shared with school districts, including an FAQ that has since been deleted, as well as cultural competency training. But he stated that this case is not about California Assembly Bill 1955, which prohibits forcing teachers to disclose the gender identity of their students.
The Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth, or SAFETY Act, was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in July 2024, in response to more than a dozen California school boards proposing or passing parental notification policies that required school staff to inform parents if a child asks to use a name or pronoun different from the one assigned at birth.
A statement from the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus says that Benitez’s ruling “deliberately injects confusion into the public understanding” of the SAFETY Act and “signals an alarming willingness to undermine long-standing constitutional rights to privacy and nondiscrimination protections across California law.”
Bonta’s office on Monday filed a brief seeking to stay the court’s injunction. A spokesperson for Bonta said the district court misapplied the law and that the decision will ultimately be reversed on appeal.
“We are committed to securing school environments that allow transgender students to safely participate as their authentic selves while recognizing the important role that parents play in students’ lives,” said a statement from Bonta’s office.
A statement from the Thomas More Society, the Chicago-based conservative Catholic law firm that took on the case, called the judge’s decision a “landmark class-action ruling.”
“Today’s incredible victory finally, and permanently, ends California’s dangerous and unconstitutional regime of gender secrecy policies in schools,” said Paul M. Jonna, special counsel at Thomas More Society and a partner at LiMandri & Jonna.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that this ruling puts transgender and gender-nonforming students at risk of being outed.
“A culture of outing harms everyone — students, families, and school staff alike — by removing opportunities to build trust. LGBTQ+ students deserve to decide on their own terms if, when, and how to come out, and to be able to be themselves at school,” said Christine Parker, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
An attorney for the Escondido Union School District argued in court documents that both the California Constitution and the state education code protect the privacy rights of students in many contexts. For instance, the California Supreme Court has held that children have the right to an abortion without state notification of their parents. And school counselors are barred from disclosing confidential information if the counselor believes that it would result in a danger to the health or safety of the student.
Legal experts said the case is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
When the case came up during a panel at the California School Boards Association conference in Sacramento earlier this month, Anthony De Marco, a partner at the firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, which represents school districts, called it a “direct attack” on California education.
“It crosses a line,” De Marco said, while speaking to board members about important legal issues they may be facing. “Certified employees should not be able to opt out.”
Jeff Freitas, president of the California Federation of Teachers, called the court decision “an attack on the safety of our students and educators.” He said that as a math teacher, he witnessed students who were struggling with issues that they wanted to keep private from their parents.
“Students more often go to their parents than their teachers,” Freitas said. “If they’re not going to their parents, there’s probably a reason why.”
EdSource reporter Thomas Peele contributed to this report.
Fewer than half — 46% — of transgender and nonbinary young people ages 13-24 report that most or all of the people in their lives use what they consider to be their pronouns, according to data released by The Trevor Project last week. For teens ages 13-17, that percentage drops to 40%.
Transgender and nonbinary young people who were addressed by their pronouns had lower rates of suicide attempts in the past year compared to those whose pronouns were ignored — 11% vs. 17%. That’s a 31% less chance of a past-year suicide attempt, according to the nonprofit that provides crisis support services for LGBTQ+ people.
The study surveyed over 12,000 youth ages 13 to 24. Its findings come as the Trump administration increasingly cracks down on LGBTQ+ issues such as pronoun and facility usage in schools, and as federal lawmakers continue to be divided over whether privacy laws protect a students’ transgender or nonbinary identity from being revealed to their parents.
“Our data show that something as simple as respecting a young person’s pronouns is linked to significantly lower suicide risk for transgender and nonbinary students,” said Steven Hobaica, research scientist at the Trevor Project, in a statement to K-12 Dive. “Our data show that this small, everyday act can make a real life-saving difference in a young person’s life. This is a public health issue that we cannot ignore.”
Hobaica added that using the pronouns that the students themselves use could help improve their sense of belonging and create a positive and safe climate.
“At the same time, educators should not be placed in positions where they must choose between following a law and protecting a student’s well-being,” said Hobaica. “This dilemma calls for evidence-based guidance at the district level with protections for educators and policies that prioritize student safety while navigating local legal constraints.”
Many controversial issues related to transgender student rights and their inclusion in school are pending in the court system, making school policies a patchwork across the nation. Legal challenges include whether transgender students should be able to use facilities and play on sports teams aligning with their gender identity, whether parents should be alerted about their pronoun use or names in school, and whether books on LGBTQ+ issues should be removed from shelves.
Approximately 7% of transgender youth ages 13-17 live in states that require revealing transgender students’ identities to their guardians before school staff can use a student’s preferred name or pronouns, according to the Movement Advancement Project.
Another 7% in that age group live in states that require their identities be revealed to parents or guardians if they make specific disclosures or requests about their gender identity to school staff.
In another survey released by The Trevor Project last year, an overwhelming majority of LGBTQ+ students said their mental health was negatively impacted by anti-LGBTQ+ policies in schools.
The Trump administration says it will withhold some federal funding from Chicago Public Schools over an initiative to improve outcomes for Black students and guidelines allowing transgender students to play sports and use facilities based on the gender with which they identify.
Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education, wrote the district Tuesday saying his office has found CPS violated anti-discrimination laws and will lose grant dollars through the Magnet School Assistance Program. The district, with a budget of roughly $10.2 billion, has a five-year, $15 million Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant it received last year.
The feds are demanding that the district abolish the Black Student Success Plan it unveiled in February and issue a statement saying it will require students to compete in sports or use locker rooms and bathroom facilities based on their biological sex at birth, among other demands.
However, Illinois law conflicts on both fronts, putting CPS in a difficult position. The state issued guidance in March that outlines compliance with the Illinois Human Rights Law, including that schools must allow transgender students access to facilities that correspond to their gender identity. Separately, an Illinois law passed in 2024 requires the Chicago school board to have a Black Student Achievement Committee and plan for serving Black students.
Chicago Public Schools said Wednesday in an emailed statement that it “does not comment on ongoing investigations.” Previously, its leaders have said that the Black Students Success Plan is a priority to address longstanding academic and discipline disparities that Black students face. They have vowed to forge ahead with the five-year plan in defiance of the Trump administration’s crackdown on race-based initiatives.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said earlier this year that he would take the Trump administration to court if it takes federal funding away from CPS because of the district’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. His office also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In response to a complaint from a Virginia-based conservative nonprofit earlier this year, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into the Black Student Success Plan, which sets goals to double the number of male Black teachers, reduce Black student suspensions, and teach Black history in more classrooms. Trainor said in his department’s interpretation, the initiative runs afoul of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year banning the consideration of race in college admissions by offering added support to Black students and teachers exclusively.
“This is textbook racial discrimination, and no justification proffered by CPS can overcome the patent illegality of its racially exclusionary plan,” he wrote.
The OCR also launched an investigation in March of CPS, the Illinois State Board of Education, and suburban Deerfield Public School District 109 to look into their policies on transgender students using facilities and participating in school sports. Trainor said Chicago’s Guidelines Regarding the Support of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students violate Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education.
District officials told Chalkbeat recently that the members of a new school board Black Student Achievement Committee tasked with overseeing the plan’s rollout will be unveiled later this month.
Stacy Davis Gates, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, issued a statement decrying the federal move to withhold funds from CPS and saying the district will stay the course.
“We will not back down,” she said in the statement. “We will not apologize. Our duty is to our students, and no amount of political bullying will shake our commitment to them.”
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
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Do transgender student athletes’ involvement in girls’ and women’s sports — an issue that has recently jeopardized schools’ federal funding — fall under government efficiency and oversight? That question starkly divided lawmakers among party lines in a nearly 4-hour hearing on Wednesday held by the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee, a newly-formed subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
The DOGE Subcommittee hearing — meant to discuss the politically charged issue of Title IX and transgender student rights that has taken center stage under the Trump administration — quickly deteriorated to repeated gavel-banging, a motion to adjourn the meeting, disagreement over the committee’s purpose, arguments over lawmakers’ allotted speaking times, and discussions of differences in male and female elbow-joint anatomy and muscle mass.
The subcommittee was created to oversee “federal civil service, including compensation, classification, and benefits; federal property disposal; government reorganizations and operations, including transparency, performance, grants management, and accounting measures generally,” according to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s rule book.
Witnesses included two cisgender female athletes advocating for athletic teams without transgender students, the chair for the USA Fencing Board of Directors, and the CEO of National Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ rights.
Republican lawmakers, who have called for less federal oversight of education and a return of that power to the states, said the hearing was necessary because it related to Title IX, a federal law meant to prohibit sex discrimination in federally funded education programs.
“It’s an important issue that biological men stay out of women’s sports,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, chair of the committee and Republican from Georgia.
Rep. William Timmons, R-S.C., said the hearing was meant to “shine a light not only on the integrity of women’s sports,” but also on how institutions like USA Fencing and others may be misusing their authority to “push controversial policies that violate basic human rights and disregard their Congressionally-authorized mission.”
“This is what happens when you allow God to be pushed out of everything,” added Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz.
Democratic lawmakers at the hearing, however, said it was a waste of the subcommittee’s time and did not fall under the body’s jurisdiction, which instead includes issues like proposed cuts across the government.
“This subcommittee could be focusing on the layoffs that President Trump has executed: over 200,000 firings of federal employees,” said Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass. “That does affect the efficiency of our government programs.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., concurred, saying the subcommittee has “never really talked about government efficiency or any serious legislative work,” and that he was “surprised that this subcommittee is not apparently in charge of policing women’s sports.”
Stephanie Turner, left, a fencer who refused to compete against a transgender athlete, and Payton McNabb, right, a former North Carolina high school volleyball player injured by a transgender opponent, are sworn in during the hearing held by the Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee at the U.S. Capitol on May 7, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images via Getty Images
DOGE impacts on K-12
The DOGE Subcommittee is among the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration and Republicans to cut back on what they say are instances of abuse, fraud and waste in the government. Its formation is an extension of similar efforts conducted by the Department of Government Efficiency, also referred to as DOGE.
Those efforts have had major implications for the K-12 sector in recent months, including gutting the Education Department by laying off more than 1,300 employees, closing or significantly reducing its offices, canceling grants entirely or retracting grant competitions, and proposing a 15% cut to the department’s funding.
The reduction in expenses from DOGE’s efforts is also expected to put a strain on K-12 finances, according to a Moody’s report released in April.
Among DOGE cuts were seven of the Education Department’s 12 local offices for the Office for Civil Rights, leaving schools with reduced oversight of civil rights compliance. Those offices were in charge of investigating allegations of Title IX violations — the subject of the hearing Wednesday — for half of states.
The Education Department has since announced a Title IX Special Investigations Team, which taps the Department of Justice for investigations and ultimate enforcement of the separation of transgender students from girls’ and women’s athletics teams and spaces in schools and colleges.
One such investigation recently conducted by the Education Department and referred to the Justice Department for enforcement has put on the line almost $864 million of Maine’s federal education funding, which it said could be cut for past and present Title IX violations. Those violations were found over the state’s policy allowing transgender athletes to play on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
The Department of Justice, in suing the state last month, said “many, many states” were next, including California and Minnesota, which are currently under investigation for alleged Title IX and FERPA violations related to transgender issues like school sports participation and gender support plans.
Title IX civil rights complaints have historically come second to disability-related complaints when excluding thousands of sex discrimination complaints that were filed by a single person in recent fiscal years, skewing OCR data.
Disability-related complaints were briefly paused by the administration after Trump took office and then resumed after reports emerged of thousands of OCR investigations coming to an abrupt halt.
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Almost immediately after taking office, President Donald Trump launched a flurry of executive orders and policy directives that threaten to roll back the civil rights of transgender and nonbinary students and erase their identities. The administration has also targeted colleges that support transgender inclusion.
Despite these moves, legal experts and transgender rights experts say college leaders can protect transgender and nonbinary students and make their campuses welcoming spaces. That type of support can be crucial to recruit those students, as well as improve their mental health and well-being on campus.
But implementing affirming policies for those students can be challenging, as institutions risk losing federal funding or facing Title IX investigations under the policies now in place.
Another executive order, which was blocked by a federal court, withheld federal funding to medical providers that provide gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies, to transgender people under the age of 19. An additional order directed federal agencies to end “equity-related” grants “to the maximum extent allowed by law.”
The U.S. Department of Education also issued guidance in late January advising education leaders to follow the previous Trump administration’s Title IX regulations after the Biden-era version of the rules were struck down. The Trump administration’s letter stated the department will enforce Title IX in a way that is consistent with Trump’s executive order mandating the federal government only recognize two sexes that cannot be changed.
This interpretation stands in contrast with the Biden-era version of the Title IX rules, which had prohibited discrimination based on gender identity.The Biden administration also withdrew proposed Title IX rules in December that would have barred blanket bans on transgender students participating on sports teams aligning with their gender identity.
Yet another executive order targeted an extremely small sliver of student athletes nationwide by threatening to withhold federal funding from colleges or K-12 schools that allow transgender girls and women from competing in sports aligning with their gender identity. The NCAA revised its policies to comply with the order.
The new administration has already opened Title IX investigations into San José State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, and othersthat allow or have allowed transgender women or girls to participate on teams corresponding with their gender identity.
However, the enforceability of the Trump administration’s recent executive orders, which are essentially “ideological policy statements,” has not yet been determined, said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Williams Institute.
At the very least, colleges shouldn’t be rushing to implement “harmful and discriminatory policies” before they are legally required to do so, said Jose Abrigo, an attorney and HIV project director for Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. The policies could be blocked or modified by the courts and preemptive compliance could “needlessly harm students,” he said.
The executive orders try to suppress speech, erase identities and punish those who affirm the existence of transgender and nonbinary people on college campuses — institutions that are meant to be “bastions of free thought and open discourse,” Abrigo said.
“Academic institutions should be places where truth is explored, not dictated,” Abrigo said, “where students are empowered to live authentically, not forced into silence by discriminatory and unconstitutional edicts from the president.”
How colleges can protect trans students
College leaders have several ways to affirm and protect their transgender and nonbinary students, experts say.
Higher ed institutions are in the business of education, so they should be informing students about what gender-affirming care is available and how they can access it, said Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
They should also educate students about their options for changing their name and gender markers on legal documents and their rights concerning use of locker rooms or restrooms corresponding to their gender identities both nationally and in their own states, they added.
Policies allowing students to easily change their names across campus can be effective, said Sarah Lipson, a public health professor at Boston University. These allow a transgender student to enter a new classroom and avoid a faculty member referring to them by their deadname — a name given to them that they no longer use, she said.
But those policies should be flexible, such as including a transgender student’s deadname in communications to their family if they are not out at home, she said.
Colleges also need to provide support to transgender and nonbinary students through campus counseling centers, Beemyn said. Smaller colleges without counseling centers can refer students to outside therapists that work with transgender or nonbinary people, they said.
Gender-inclusive housing is also critical for transgender students, Lipson said. Placing transgender students in single occupancy dorms to avoid pairing them with another student who shares their gender assigned at birth is “not inclusive,” she said.
“That’s really changing the college environment for the trans student by saying you have to live by yourself in order to be part of this community,” Lipson said.
Public colleges in red states with transgender-affirming restrictions have other options to support or recruit transgender and nonbinary students, Lipson said. For instance, they could limit pronoun use on admission documents, referring instead to students by their names. Colleges could also use plural or gender-neutral pronouns instead of “he or she” or “your son or daughter,” she said.
“It requires combing through a lot of materials, but most importantly the front-facing admissions materials to ensure that those are not unnecessarily reinforcing a gender binary,” Lipson said.
The biggest thing colleges could do now is not erase their transgender and nonbinary students, Abrigo said. Instead, campus officials should recognize their existence, affirm their identities, and ensure they have access to the resources and support they need, he said.
College leaders can simply send messages to students, reminding them that transgender and nonbinary students matter, that they’re part of the campus community and that they’re aware of the threats against them, Lipson said.
“Some of these students that we’ve talked to in red states were really reflecting that,” Lipson said. “‘We feel that people are really looking out for us to the extent that they can.’”
Non-affirming campuses could impact mental health
The mental health impact of the executive orders on students can vary — depending in part on where they are in the process of coming out as transgender or nonbinary, Beemyn said.
Beemyn is working on a study that asks transgender students if the national climate is affecting whether they are willing to be out about their gender identity.
Some students in liberal states or at progressive colleges — especially those with a strong support network — don’t feel the effects of national politics as much, Beemyn said. However, the national discourse has prompted some students to say they are less likely to come out to new people and want to be less visible, they said.
“It would make logical sense that if someone can’t be themselves and has to hide who they are, that’s going to have negative effects on someone’s sense of well-being and sense of belonging, community and self-worth,” Beemyn said.
The prevalence of mental health issues is disproportionately high among higher ed students who are transgender and nonbinary — but those rates can differ from campus to campus, Lipson said.
“It would make logical sense that if someone can’t be themselves and has to hide who they are, that’s going to have negative effects on someone’s sense of well-being and sense of belonging, community and self-worth.”
Genny Beemyn
Director, Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Boston Universityresearchers analyzed national data from more than 11,000 transgender and nonbinary students at about 250 U.S. colleges and universities collected between 2022 and 2024.
Overall, the research showed just 16% of transgender and nonbinary students are “flourishing” on campus. But that rate is much higher at some campuses, reaching 50% at some institutions, said Lipson.
The rate of students experiencing symptoms of depression also fluctuated widely across colleges, from about 33% to upwards of 90% of transgender and nonbinary students, Lipson said. The rate of anxiety varied dramatically as well, ranging between 28% and 82%, she said.
The researchers haven’t yet examined which institutional policies might account for differences in mental health outcomes across campuses, but they plan to explore that next, said Lipson.
Even so, researchers already know access to mental health care varies greatly. At some campuses, as few as 30% of transgender students said they had access to competent mental health care, compared with over 80% at other institutions,Lipson said.
“There is a lot of variation in all of these outcomes — mental health, treatment use, and discrimination as well,” said Lipson. “That suggests that college campuses are playing a role in explaining this variation.”
Complying with the anti-trans laws
Many conservative states have enacted anti-transgender laws, including statutes barring transgender students from participating in athletics or using locker rooms or bathrooms that align with their gender identities. Finding a balance between complying with anti-trans policies while minimizing harm to transgender and nonbinary students can be challenging.
In February, new restroom signs at the University of Cincinnati reading “biological men” and “biological women” sparked student outcry.
The university stated it was following a Ohio law that took effect Feb. 25 requiring schools to designate multi-person student restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms and showers to be used exclusively by students of the male or female “biological sex only.”The law requires “clear signage” to make those designations.
But on Feb. 26, university administrators apologized in a letter to students and said they would replace the signs,adding that use of the term “biological” on the signs was “an error on our part.”Republican state Rep. Adam Bird, who cosponsored the bill, reportedly said the term “biological” wasn’t needed on the signs to comply with the law.
“Academic institutions should be places where truth is explored, not dictated.”
Jose Abrigo
HIV project director, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
As with state laws, colleges should take Trump’s executive orders as serious threats that merit a response to protect the organization, UCLA’s Redfield said. A loss of federal funding could be consequential, considering higher ed institutions provide a wealth of research and data collection about the experiences of transgender people, she said.
College leaders should likewise understand the threats are motivated not by science, but by ideology and bias against transgender and nonbinary people, Redfield said.
Beemyn echoed those comments. The laws make it “impossible for [transgender and nonbinary students] to live their lives in a way that’s right for them. That’s a real denial of their humanity,” Beemyn said.
The University of Washington said it’s not taking any “preemptive actions” until it receives further guidance on how to comply with the Education Department’s Dear Colleague letter regarding Title IX enforcement.
“We are committed to providing access to excellence and a welcoming environment for all and believe that a breadth of perspectives and experiences make for a richer educational experience for everyone,” the University of Washington said in a Feb. 25 statement to Higher Ed Dive.
If higher education institutions like the University of Washington and others want transgender and nonbinary students at their schools, they need to figure out ways to recognize their existence, said Redfield.
“They have to make it clear that their intention is to create an environment where trans and nonbinary students can thrive,” she said.
Australian researchers who receive United States funding have been asked to disclose links to China and whether they agree with US President Donald Trump’s “two sexes” executive order.
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Dive Brief:
Two transgender high school athletes are challenging in federal court President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order banning transgender girls and women from participating in sports aligned with their gender identity.
Originally filed against a New Hampshire state law that bars transgender girls in grades 5-12 from playing school sports, the lawsuit filed by Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, is expanding to include Trump and the federal departments of justice and education among the defendants.
Tirrell and Turmelle, represented by GLAD Law and the ACLU of New Hampshire, allege Trump’s executive order is discriminatory and violates their federal equal protection guarantees under the 14th Amendment and their rights under Title IX.
Dive Insight:
Henry Klementowicz, deputy legal director at ACLU of NH, said in a Wednesday statement that every child in the state deserves “a right to equal opportunities at school.”
“We’re expanding our lawsuit to challenge President Trump’s executive orders because, like the state law, it excludes, singles out, and discriminates against transgender students and insinuates that they are not deserving of the same educational opportunities as all other students,” Klementowicz said.
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire previously ordered in September that the two students could play sports on teams corresponding with their gender identities while Tirrell and Turmelle v. Edelblut advanced.
Trump’s “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order, which is now being targeted by the lawsuit, calls for a recission of all federal funds from educational programs that allow transgender girls and women to participate in girls’ sports. The order also directs the U.S. secretary of education to zero in on Title IX enforcement against K-12 schools and colleges where girls and women are required “to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”
The day after Trump issued that executive order, the U.S. Department of Education opened Title IX investigations into a middle and high school athletics association in Massachusetts, as well as two universities, on the basis that they allowed transgender girls and women to play on teams aligned with their gender identity.
Trump’s order further directs the U.S. Department of Justice to abide by the nationwide vacatur from a recent court order by a federal judge who struck down the Biden administration’s Title IX rule in January. The Biden-era Title IX rule was the first time protections were codified for LGBTQI+ students and employees at federally funded schools under the anti-sex discrimination law.
After that January court decision, the Education Department said it would enforce the Title IX regulations finalized in 2020 during the first Trump administration.
On February 5, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The order aims to bar transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports by directing agencies to withdraw federal funding from schools that refuse to comply with the order.
The EO claims that, in recent years, educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women’s sports, which the Trump administration believes denies women and girls equal opportunity to participate in competitive sports, thus violating Title IX. As a result, the EO sets policy to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities” and to “oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly.”
With respect to the specific actions ordered, the EO directs the secretary of education to ensure compliance with the court order to vacate the Biden administration’s Title IX rule and to take other actions to ensure that the 2024 regulations do not have effect. It also directs the secretary to take action to “protect all-female athletic opportunities” by setting forth regulations and policy guidance that clearly specifies and clarifies “that women’s sports are reserved for women.”
Notably, the EO further directs all federal agencies to review grants to educational programs and to rescind funding to programs that fail to comply with policy set forth in the EO. Institutions with grant programs deemed to be noncompliant with this order could, therefore, risk losing federal funding for that program.
The EO also seeks quick enforcement by federal agencies. The EO orders the Department of Education to prioritize Title IX enforcement actions against educational institutions and athletic associations that “deny female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events.” The Department of Justice is also tasked with providing resources to relevant agencies to ensure “expeditious enforcement” of the policy set forth in the EO.
Finally, the EO directs the assistant to the president for domestic policy to convene both major athletic organizations and state attorneys general to promote policies consistent with Title IX and identify best practices in enforcing equal opportunities for women to participate in sports.
On February 6, the NCAA updated its policy regarding transgender student-athlete participation in response to the EO. According to the NCAA, the new policy limits competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth, but it allows student-athletes assigned male at birth to practice with women’s teams and receive benefits while practicing with them. For men’s sports, student-athletes may participate in practice and competition regardless of their sex assigned at birth or their gender identity, assuming all other eligibility requirements are met.
Institutions should review their policies and practices in light of the EO and the NCAA’s policy change. CUPA-HR will continue to monitor for Title IX updates and keep members apprised of new enforcement under the Trump administration.
