Trump administration undoes civil rights settlements that found discrimination against trans studentshttps://www.advocate.com/politics/national/trump-trans-student-settlements-reversed 🔗Christopher Wiggins (6 April 2026)
The Trump administration is systematically unwinding a series of federal civil rights agreements that found schools had discriminated against transgender students, reversing years of enforcement and forcing districts into a legal and financial bind, according to reporting by The New York Times.
The Education Department has begun terminating or rewriting settlements negotiated through its Office for Civil Rights, agreements that required schools to treat discrimination based on gender identity as a Title IX violation. Those settlements from previous administrations followed formal federal findings that students had been denied equal access to education because of their gender identity.
One of the clearest examples is the Delaware Valley School District in Pennsylvania. A federal investigation into the district in 2015 concluded that officials had failed to adequately respond to sex-based discrimination against a transgender student. Investigators found the district's policies did not sufficiently address gender-based harassment and required it to revise them to explicitly include protections for gender identity.
The resulting agreement from 2016 defined gender-based discrimination as including bias tied to gender identity, gender expression, and transgender status, and required the district to ensure equal access to programs, activities, and facilities, along with staff training and systemic policy changes.
At the time, federal officials were unambiguous about the law's reach. In correspondence to the district, the Office for Civil Rights wrote that "Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities operated by recipients of Federal financial assistance," and required the district to adopt policies addressing gender-based discrimination.
That position has now been reversed.
