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The Branford Democratic Town Committee posted a graphic on Monday from Have A Gay Day stating, “The Trump administration has formally rescinded Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students.”

The committee’s caption said “the homophobia continues,” adding that years of work have been undone “with the dash of an evil pen,” and calling the move “horrific.”

That, however, is not an accurate legal description of what the Education Department did on Sept. 28 to "protect women’s safety, dignity, and educational opportunities in schools that receive federal funding."

Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that the department is removing the Biden administration’s illegal rewrite of Title IX regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations and reinstating the 2020 Title IX text. The change took effect September 29.

The department’s own statement is blunt: the 2024 rule had already been enjoined by multiple courts and vacated. The Trump administration has enforced the 2020 rule since the first weeks of its second term. McMahon said the recodification “effects no change of current substantive law” and is meant to make the published regulations match what courts already required and what the department has already been enforcing.

In other words, this was simply cleanup of a vacated rule.

McMahon said the published Title IX regulations now "faithfully [reflect] court orders and Congressional intent—reducing confusion for parents, students, and educational institutions."

She promised to "continue to relentlessly champion equal opportunity for all Americans and hold accountable any school or college that violates the rights, privacy, or athletic opportunities of our women and girls.” 

What the 2024 rule did — and why courts struck it

Title IX, enacted in 1972, bars discrimination “on the basis of sex” in education programs that receive federal money. "This includes female students’ rights to single sex bathrooms and locker rooms, and competitive athletic competition restricted to biological female athletes."

The 2024 Biden rule tried to rewrite that. It treated sexual orientation and gender identity as “sex.” It allowed males to enter women's sports and intimate facilities. It also widened the definition of sexual harassment and expanded when schools had to investigate off-campus conduct—even investigating school staff for using incorrect pronouns or failing to ask students to declare a preferred gender.

Republican-led states sued. Federal courts blocked the rule across large parts of the country and later vacated it. The second Trump administration declined to defend Biden's rule.

That is the legal backdrop the Branford post omits.

What the 2020 rule restored

The 2020 regulation — written in the first Trump term and now back in the CFR — takes the following steps to protect women and girls:

1. Returning Enforcement to Biological Reality: Aligns Title IX’s sex-based protections with biological reality, not ideological fantasy. 
2. Securing Resolution Agreements with Higher Education Institutions: Signed resolution agreements, including with the University of Pennsylvania and Wagner College, which obligated them to re-establish sex-separated sports and intimate facilities, restore to females their titles misappropriated by male athletes, and apologize to female athletes for their prior policies allowing sex discrimination.
3. Creating Title IX Special Investigations Team: Created the Title IX Special Investigations Team (Title IX SIT) consisting of expert attorneys and investigators to ensure consistent investigations and expeditious enforcement for Title IX violations.
4. Initiating Investigations: launched a significant volume of Title IX investigations – including into the California Community College Athletic Association, The New Richmond School, and Western Carolina University – amid allegations that they allow men to compete in women’s sports and/or occupy female-only intimate spaces.
5. Taking Enforcement Action: The Department has taken enforcement action when entities have refused to remediate their Title IX violations.

Even if you accept the Branford committee’s framing, Connecticut public schools are not left without LGBTQ protections. State law, including C.G.S. §10-15c, already bars discrimination in public schools on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. Local boards, including Branford’s, have their own nondiscrimination policies.

The graphic’s other problem is that the phrase “protections for LGBTQ+ students” collapses several different issues into one: gay and lesbian students, transgender students in sports and bathrooms, pronoun policies, and campus sexual-assault procedure. These are not the same thing.

A gay student harassed for being gay can still have a sex-stereotyping claim under older Title IX case law, and is still protected under Connecticut law. A male student who identifies as female seeking to join a girls’ team or enter a girls' locker room is an entirely different claim. The 2020 rule and the current administration treat that second scenario as a conflict with women’s rights, not as a civil rights case.

Why Branford Democrats call the protection of women’s safety, dignity, and educational opportunities “homophobic” remains unexplained.

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