\n<\/p>\n
The Trump administration is proposing a change to a long-standing rule that requires schools provide equal opportunities under Title IX for all students to participate in noncontact sports. <\/p>\n
And it\u2019s coming from the U.S. Department of Energy as the administration increasingly relies on other agencies to join the U.S. Department of Education in enforcing its interpretation of civil rights laws in schools. <\/p>\n
Multiple agencies in recent months have joined the Education Department in launching civil rights investigations into schools, athletic associations, and state education departments to advance the president\u2019s directives to bar transgender athletes from girls\u2019 sports and eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at schools.<\/p>\n
The proposed Title IX change was submitted alongside several others in the Federal Register last month. The regulations are slated to take effect July 15. Inside Higher Ed first reported on the group of proposed changes.<\/p>\n
It would rescind a requirement that schools receiving money from the Energy Department allow students of both genders to try out for noncontact sports teams when the school doesn\u2019t have both boys\u2019 and girls\u2019 teams. The change would affect all students, both cisgender and transgender\u2014as the regulation currently ensures girls can try out for boys\u2019 teams if there\u2019s no equivalent available to them and vice versa.<\/p>\n
The Title IX revision in particular would apply to schools\u2014and it\u2019s an example of the administration making an education rule change without the Education Department, which President Donald Trump wants to dissolve. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it signals that other agencies are willing to take an enforcement role, perhaps even lead an enforcement role, when it comes to questions of gender identity and accommodations in schools where previously the Department of Education had been the primary agency for leading those inquiries and effectuating penalties or resolutions,\u201d said Julia Martin, the legislative director for the Bruman Group, a law firm that represents school districts. \u201cThe other funds that agencies administer can be further leveraged in those discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n
In its reasoning, the Energy Department wrote that \u201csuch athletics rules ignore differences between the sexes which are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality while also imposing a burden on local governments and small businesses who are in the best position to determine the needs of their community and constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n
The department also noted that the change aligns with Trump\u2019s executive order threatening to pull federal funds from schools that let transgender athletes compete on girls\u2019 teams.<\/p>\n
The proposed change drew more than 21,000 comments in a feedback window that ended this week. The rule won\u2019t go into effect in its current form if there are \u201csignificant adverse comments.\u201d<\/p>\n
For this change and others the Energy Department is using an unusual procedure, called direct final rulemaking, to avoid providing a formal comment period for members of the public to weigh in, which is required when agencies propose major regulations or major changes to them. <\/p>\n
What the administration is trying to do isn\u2019t legal, said Ron Levin, a professor who specializes in administrative law at Washington University in St. Louis who, along with other administrative law experts, submitted comments flagging concerns about the agency\u2019s procedure.<\/p>\n
For minor, noncontroversial changes, agencies can announce they\u2019re adopting something different and ask for feedback if anyone is opposed, Levin said. But the Trump administration appears to be interpreting the ability to skip public comment \u201cto mean that if it\u2019s so clear that we\u2019re right, it\u2019s unnecessary to take comments to hear from anyone about whether we\u2019re right,\u201d Levin said.<\/p>\n
Either the administration doesn\u2019t know what the law requires, or it\u2019s trying to blaze past it, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEither way, thumbs down from me,\u201d Levin said.<\/p>\n
Another one of the Energy Department changes would revoke a provision requiring that new construction it funds be accessible to people with disabilities. And a third would rescind a number of nondiscrimination provisions, including a requirement that recipients of department funding not run its programs in a way that might have discriminatory effects\u2014a concept known as disparate impact\u2014and another require that they provide information about their services in languages other than English when the intended population needs information in another language.<\/p>\n
An Education Department spokesperson didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment on whether that agency planned to propose comparable changes to its regulations.<\/p>\n
The Title IX change would affect any schools that receive Energy Department funds\u2014roughly 300 universities and 80 school districts, according to data from the agency. Meanwhile, the Education Department\u2019s Title IX regulations retain the requirement that schools offer girls the chance to try out for noncontact sports when there\u2019s no girls\u2019 team and vice versa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a number of energy-efficiency grants that the Department of Energy administers, so we would likely see some changes to the terms and conditions of those awards, and they would look a little bit different from last year,\u201d the Bruman Group\u2019s Martin said.<\/p>\n
The Energy Department change simply removes the equal participation requirement.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it doesn\u2019t stop a school from still offering that,\u201d Martin said. \u201cIt\u2019s just no longer going to be a requirement in order to get the grant. So in that case, we wouldn\u2019t necessarily expect a significant change.\u201d<\/p>\n
The move shows that the administration is implementing its policies on gender identity and its interpretation of Title IX across multiple agencies, Martin said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first time Elizabeth Meyer, a professor of education policy at the University of Colorado-Boulder, has seen the Energy Department do any rulemaking for Title IX in the 20 years she\u2019s studied the anti-sex-discrimination law and its intersection with schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor young people to be constantly told by their government that they don\u2019t matter and their government is not going to protect them is just devastating,\u201d Meyer said.<\/p>\n
The Association of Title IX Administrators, an organization that supports the implementation of the law in universities and schools, said in its submitted comments that the change would harm all athletes\u2014not just transgender students. <\/p>\n
\u201cRegulations would be more likely to survive challenges in court … if focused on actual harms, rather than speculative harms that could lead to banning an entire class of people who are trying to compete and have a right to do so,\u201d wrote Brett Sokolow, the chairman of the association\u2019s advisory board. <\/p>\n
The interpretation of Title IX has ping-ponged between Democratic presidents and Trump, with the Obama and Biden administrations aiming to expand protections for transgender and nonbinary students, and Trump swiftly rolling those ambitions back. President Joe Biden\u2019s Education Department attempted to expand the regulations to outlaw categorical bans on transgender student participation in sports, but the agency dropped the effort in its final days so Trump couldn\u2019t use the rule as a vehicle to fast-track his conflicting plans.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s administration has argued the presence of trans athletes on girls\u2019 teams is a violation of Title IX\u2014an interpretation of the law no court has endorsed, legal experts have said.<\/p>\n
The landmark anti-sex-discrimination law, which was passed as an equalizer in sports, has long had a component dictating that schools can offer separate teams, but in the absence of that, they must provide the opportunity for the excluded gender to play on the existing team.<\/p>\n
This proposed regulation change is one more example of how Trump\u2019s policies have become \u201cmuch more blatant\u201d in undoing protections added by other administrations, Meyer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s like 20 years of case law that shows that Title IX is meant to protect people from all forms of sex discrimination, including sex stereotyping,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Trump administration is proposing a change to a long-standing rule that requires schools provide equal opportunities under Title IX for all students to participate in noncontact sports. And it\u2019s coming from the U.S. Department of Energy as the administration increasingly relies on other agencies to join the U.S. Department of Education in enforcing its<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[270,200,611,1156,593,811],"class_list":{"0":"post-9192","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-change","9":"tag-department","10":"tag-energy","11":"tag-rule","12":"tag-title","13":"tag-u-s"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}