Transgender students protected at school by Title IX, Education Dept. says

The U.S. Department of Education announced on June 16, 2021 that it would enforce Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to cover discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, extending the law's sex-discrimination protections to LGBTQ+ students in schools that receive federal funding. The department's Office for Civil Rights issued the change as a Notice of Interpretation, citing the Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County as its legal basis.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona framed the move as a direct extension of that ruling to schools. "The Supreme Court has upheld the right for LGBTQ+ people to live and work without fear of harassment, exclusion and discrimination -- and our LGBTQ+ students have the same rights and deserve the same protections," Cardona said. He separately said "all students -- including LGBTQ+ students -- deserve the opportunity to learn and thrive in schools that are free from discrimination," according to the department's statement.

The legal basis in Bostock

Bostock v. Clayton County was a 2020 Supreme Court decision holding that Title VII's ban on sex discrimination in employment covers discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Education Department's interpretation applied that same reasoning to Title IX, a separate federal law barring sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding, on the theory that the two statutes use comparable language.

What the notice changed

The interpretation put schools on notice that the Office for Civil Rights would investigate complaints alleging discrimination against LGBTQ+ students under Title IX going forward. It marked a reversal from a January 2021 position under the prior administration, in which the department had said Title IX did not extend to LGBTQ+ discrimination claims.

Republican state attorneys general pushed back

The notice drew immediate opposition from Republican state officials. A coalition of 21 Republican state attorneys general argued the Biden administration was rewriting Title IX without going through formal rulemaking, writing that the administration's approach "represents a 180-degree change from the position" the Education Department had taken under the prior administration just months earlier. The attorneys general said that "by unilaterally plunging ahead with these sweeping dictates, your administration harms the rule of law and undermines the legitimacy of these executive agencies," and called on the administration to work with them to address their concerns rather than proceed unilaterally. The same coalition also argued the department had "misconstrued federal law" in reading Title IX to broadly protect gay and transgender individuals, a legal-interpretation dispute separate from their process objection to the way the notice was issued.

What the notice covered on paper

Alongside the Notice of Interpretation itself, the department's Office for Civil Rights issued a companion "Dear Educator" letter and a public fact sheet spelling out how the Bostock reasoning would apply to schools receiving federal funding. Those materials framed the notice as clarifying existing law rather than creating a new rule, which is also why the administration did not run it through the formal notice-and-comment rulemaking process that its Republican critics said should have applied instead.

US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by the Federal Register and CBS News. It restores a story originally published on this site in June 2021; figures are as reported at the time.