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transgender
'A Chilling Alarm': Trump Admin Kills Civil Rights Settlements Supporting Trans Students
"There is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel," said a leader at the National Women's Law Center.
Apr 06, 2026
Continuing the assault on transgender people that President Donald Trump launched as soon as he returned to power last year, the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights rescinded portions of settlements intended to protect trans students at five school districts and one college.
The department framed the move as "freeing schools" from the Biden and Obama administrations' "illegal and burdensome enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972," a landmark civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.
According to The Associated Press, "One of the school systems, Delaware Valley School District in rural eastern Pennsylvania, received notice of the change from the Trump administration in February and has since voted to roll back its antidiscrimination protections for transgender students."
The administration also rescinded provisions of resolution agreements with Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware and Fife School District in Washington, as well as California's La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified, and Taft College.
This is a cruel step by the Trump administration that will make our schools less safe and welcoming for all.Trans kids deserve what every student deserves — a school that supports their freedom to thrive.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) April 6, 2026 at 6:05 PM
"The Trump administration has opened at least 40 civil rights investigations into educational institutions that provide protections for transgender students," and filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota, The New York Times reported. However, "Education Department officials said there was no precedent for the federal government terminating previously negotiated civil rights settlements with schools. Civil rights lawyers who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations said they were unaware of previous examples of such a move."
Advocates for trans people sharply condemned the rollback, which came on the heels of last week's International Transgender Day of Visibility.
"This sends a chilling alarm that trans students really are a target of this administration," Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the California-based Transgender Law Center, told the Times. "It's extremely concerning. Students should be safe to go to school and get an education."
Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women's Law Center, said in a statement that "there is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel. Title IX exists to ensure that students are protected from discrimination and treated with dignity so that they can learn and thrive in our schools. It's always been about that. It's what students, families, lawmakers, and advocates fought for when Title IX was passed decades ago. But the Trump administration's Department of Education has spent its limited resources to strip Title IX of that very purpose."
"Real complaints of discrimination and sexual assault are going unanswered by the Department of Education while conservative lawmakers continue to escalate their attacks on a small minority of students," Patel noted. "Parents, teachers, and students need the department to focus on addressing real harms on campuses instead of rolling back policies that keep all students safe."
"We should all be alarmed at the Trump administration's cruel escalation of their anti-trans agenda," she added. "When they push laws that explicitly target trans people or attempt to use scientifically inaccurate language to define sex, they are also inevitably targeting all women and girls. They want to control what we do, how we look, and how we act until we are pushed out of public life. But we are not going anywhere."
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Trump Attack on Trans Athletes Continues as DOJ Sues Minnesota Education Department
"It is astonishing that any president would try to target, shame, and harass children just trying to be themselves, let alone a president with so many actual problems to address," said the state attorney general.
Mar 30, 2026
The US Department of Justice on Monday continued President Donald Trump's crusade against transgender youth competing in sports in line with their identity by suing the Minnesota Department of Education and the state's high school league.
"The United States files this action to stop Minnesota's unapologetic sex discrimination against female student athletes," says the complaint, filed in a federal court in the state by the DOJ's Civil Rights Division.
"The state of Minnesota, through its Department of Education, and the Minnesota State High School League require girls to compete against boys in athletic competitions that are designated exclusively for girls and share intimate spaces, such as multiperson locker rooms and bathrooms, with boys," the complaint continues. "This unfair, intentionally discriminatory practice violates the very core of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972."
The Associated Press noted that "the administration has filed similar lawsuits against Maine and California, and has threatened the federal funding of some universities over transgender athletes, including San José State in California and the University of Pennsylvania."
Tim Leighton, a spokesperson for the league, told the AP that it does not comment on threatened or pending lawsuits. According to The New York Times, Emily Buss, a spokesperson for the state department, said Minnesota's leadership was reviewing the complaint while remaining "committed to ensuring every child—regardless of background, ZIP code, or ability—has access to a world-class education."
While Trump and his allies have aimed to stop all trans women and girls from competing as they identify—including at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles—the fight with Minnesota specifically traces back to the president's February 2025 executive order, after which the administration began investigating the state.
The Minnesota Department of Education gets over $3 billion in federal funding. Democratic state Attorney General Keith Ellison sued to stop the administration from pulling that money last April. In September, the US departments of Education and Health and Human Services concluded that the state agency and league violated Title IX, and the case was referred to the DOJ in January.
In a Monday statement, Ellison said that the DOJ's lawsuit "is just a sad attempt to get attention over something that's already been in litigation for months."
"Donald Trump is currently facing an unpopular war that he launched, rising gas prices, massive health insurance price hikes, and a partial government shutdown caused in part by his ICE agents killing two Minnesotans in broad daylight," Ellison said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "It is astonishing that any president would try to target, shame, and harass children just trying to be themselves, let alone a president with so many actual problems to address."
The DOJ filing about trans student-athletes came less than a week after Ellison and other Minnesota officials sued the Trump administration over its refusal to cooperate with state investigators probing the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents earlier this year, as well as the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, who was wounded but survived.
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'Exclusion With a New Name': IOC Bans Trans Women, Those With Sex Differences From Olympics
The genetic testing put forward by the committee "fuels suspicion, invites public scrutiny, and puts already vulnerable athletes at risk," said one advocate.
Mar 26, 2026
A new policy unveiled Thursday by the International Olympic Committee was presented as a ban on transgender athletes from participating in women's sports—but considering just one transgender woman has participated in the international games since they have been eligible to, critics said the new rules would likely have a greater impact on cisgender women with natural variations in hormones, who have already faced degrading treatment and exclusion in the sports community for years.
IOC president Kirsty Coventry, who campaigned to lead the organization with calls to "protect" women's sports in the Olympics, said that starting with the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, athletes will be required to take a one-time genetics test with the screening using a cheek swab, blood test, or saliva sample.
"Eligibility for any female category event at the Olympic Games or any other IOC event, including individual and team sports, is now limited to biological females," said Coventry, adding that the new policy “is based on science and has been led by medical experts."
The IOC worked with experts to determine how to approach the issue of transgender women in sports, which in recent years has become the subject of talking points for the Republican Party in the US and other right-wing leaders. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last year barring transgender women from competing on women's college sports teams.
The committee conducted a review not just of transgender athletes but of those who have differences in sexual development (DSD), such as being intersex, and compete in women's sports. The review has not been publicly released, but the IOC said it found athletes born with male sexual markers had physical advantages even if they were receiving treatment to reduce testosterone.
The IOC had previously allowed transgender athletes to participate in the Olympic Games if they were reducing their testosterone levels. In 2021, a weight lifter from New Zealand, Laurel Hubbard, became the first transgender women to compete at the Olympics after transitioning.
Boxers including Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan and Imane Khelif of Algeria have been subject to scrutiny and genetic testing regarding their sex; Lin was recently cleared to participate in World Boxing events in the female category. Both competed in the 2024 Olympics in Paris and won gold medals.
Khelif has said she naturally has the SRY gene that the IOC's screening would test for, and that she has naturally high levels of testosterone.
Under the IOC ruling, athletes who do not have the typical female XX sex chromosomes and have DSD will also be banned from competing. People with DSD are not always aware of their status.
South African runner Caster Semenya, who has a rare genetic trait giving her elevated levels of testosterone, was subjected to genetic testing after her fellow competitors complained about her appearance when she won a gold medal in a world championship in 2009.
Genetic screening for Olympic athletes "is not progress—it is walking backward," she told The New York Times. "This is just exclusion with a new name.”
Payoshni Mitra, executive director of the advocacy group Humans of Sport, told the Times that the new policy simply "polices women’s bodies."
“It fuels suspicion, invites public scrutiny, and puts already vulnerable athletes at risk," she said.
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