Ending Title IX Agreements Undermines Trust, Experts Argue

The Trump administration’s recent decision to scrap several civil rights settlements with school districts and one community college undermines a bedrock assumption for institutions: that the terms of an agreement will be upheld, even if the administration changes.

The rescissions could further erode the relationship between institutions and the federal government, which has fractured since Trump returned to the White House. Institutions have found that they can’t rely on the government as a dependable partner; federal agencies have cut grants without notice and imposed penalties without due process, creating uncertainty and risk for institutions.

Now they can’t assume that a settlement reached with the government will stand. Experts interviewed by Inside Higher Ed and other media outlets say rescinding a resolution agreement is unusual and damaging.

“It really undercuts any trust you have,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education. “Any resolution agreement is an agreement. It’s two parties coming to the table and working through a process to resolve concerns. If you do not think there is value to that, if you do not think the word of the other side is good or will be upheld, then the risk factor goes up significantly.”

The Education Department counters that it is upholding civil rights law, not setting a sweeping new precedent. The rescinded agreements concern Title IX violations related to reports of discrimination against transgender students, and at least one is more than a decade old.

Under Presidents Obama and Biden, the Education Department said that Title IX barred discrimination based on a student’s gender identity, including transgender status. In enforcing that guidance, the department required institutions to adopt nondiscrimination policies that include gender identity and to issue guidance to employees about “how the refusal to use a person’s preferred name and pronouns or repeated misuse of them may constitute harassment based on sex.”

But now the Trump administration says that those resolution agreements had no legal foundation and “were reached through the illegal, heavy-handed manipulation of Title IX.” Officials argue that they are enforcing the original intent of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which they say bars discrimination and harassment based on sex, not gender identity. Since Trump returned to office, his administration has worked to roll back rights for transgender people; soon after he was inaugurated, the president declared via executive order that the policy of the United States was that there are two sexes—male and female—which are “not changeable.”

It’s not clear whether the Education Department is planning to throw out other resolution agreements or take a second look at agreements reached to end investigations into other forms of discrimination, such as antisemitism. But Fansmith and others say the precedent is concerning.

“The field is wide-open for them if they keep pushing this, and the fact that they did it in the first place doesn’t indicate they have a whole lot of restraint,” said Fansmith.

Mixed Reactions

Conservative legal groups praised the administration’s decision to rescind the agreements, saying it restores rule of law to Title IX enforcement and shows the administration is not messing around.

“Title IX must be interpreted the way that it was originally intended 54 years ago, and sex means biological sex,” said Beth Parlato, senior legal counsel of the Independent Women’s Law Center, a legal advocacy organization. Parlato and others pointed to a January 2025 court ruling that vacated the Biden administration’s Title IX regulations, which explicitly protected transgender students. A federal judge said the rule would “derail deeply rooted law.”

Kim Hermann, president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, had asked the department to rescind the agreement with Delaware Valley School District, which was reached under the Obama administration. She told Inside Higher Ed that ED has “an obligation” to rescind agreements that don’t follow the law. She hopes the department will audit all the old agreements related to Title IX and gender identity.

But other advocates sharply criticized the decision. For Elena Redfield, federal policy director at UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute, which researches LGBTQ+ law and policy, the rescissions aren’t a surprise, given how the administration has interpreted Title IX and its power to enforce the law. Redfield said the administration’s interpretation has regressed compared to Trump’s first term, when officials believed that Title IX didn’t require the inclusion of trans students. Now the administration is essentially saying that Title IX requires the exclusion of trans students, she said.

“The message to LGBTQ but especially transgender students is pretty heartbreaking, and the place that it places administrators in the meantime is just so untenable,” she said. “They are being swung back and forth between two definitions of what it means to be just and inclusive … But also in many cases there’s a tension between actual [state] laws that they have to comply with” and the federal government’s interpretation of Title IX.

Clarity or Uncertainty?

For institutions under investigation now or in the future, the decision to rescind the agreements could lead some to rethink how they engage with the government, several experts said.

Jody Shipper, managing director of Grand River Solutions, which works with colleges on legal compliance issues, said some institutions might just “hold their nose,” sign a resolution agreement and then plan to work with a future administration to undo it. Alternatively, some institutions might be less inclined to sign on.

“It just sends a message that this is possible, as opposed to in the past, you knew that wasn’t an option, and so you just did all the things and got on board,” she said.

Fansmith said that colleges that have resolved investigations have relied on the fact that they faced a complaint, underwent an investigation and worked with the department to end it by taking the necessary steps to come into compliance. But if resolution agreements are going to be torn up “with every change of administration because their policy shifts, then the process is functionally useless.”

Shipper noted the administration has other ways to avoid enforcing a resolution agreement, such as slow-walking it or ghosting the school.

She believes rescinding the agreements is about making a public statement. Still, she worries that the move will fuel more uncertainty on Title IX—a law that’s become a political football as different administrations have sought to use guidance and regulations to clarify their interpretations about whom it applies to and how colleges must comply with it.

“It’s one area where certainty and consistency are critical and we have neither,” she said.

Fansmith added that in the case of these six agreements, the underlying law hasn’t changed. “It’s just politics,” he said.

ED spokesperson Amelia Joy said in a statement that “these rescissions restore a responsible relationship between school districts and the federal government, one grounded in enforcement of the law.” (Emphasis hers.)

She added that they will “restore trust by simply enforcing the true nature of the law.”

Hermann at the Southeastern Legal Foundation agreed that the rescissions should bring more certainty for schools and colleges on Title IX.

“I think that what the Trump administration is doing here is actually going to bring a lot of clarity for schools and get rid of that uncertainty because they know that these are the things that you actually need to look at—look to the law, not to a guidance letter that a random person or a random group of people decided to put out because that’s what they think the law means, even though the Constitution doesn’t give them the power to interpret it,” she said.