OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
1:19 PM – Tuesday, April 7, 2026
The U.S. Department of Education has formally withdrawn previous resolution agreements with various school districts and a college concerning gender identity-based Title IX interpretations.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced the move on Monday, asserting that prior agreements — which often forced specific “pronoun usage” and bathroom access — rested on an unlawful and “ideologically-driven” interpretation of Title IX.
With this decision, the federal government has vacated the resolution agreements previously governing gender-identity protocols at Taft College and five other school districts across the country.
This shift represents a return to a literal interpretation of the 1972 law, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded education. The Department, under President Donald Trump, maintains that Title IX’s provisions solely apply to biological sex, moving away from the broader application to preferred/imagined “gender identity” utilized by previous Democrat administrations.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey, who works under Education Secretary Linda McMahon, described the former Democrat-led enforcement strategies as “heavy-handed manipulation” of federal law, stating that the Trump administration is committed to removing “unlawful burdens” imposed on schools.
“Today, the Trump Administration is removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior Administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda,” she said in a written statement.
This policy pivot also follows a landmark January 2025 federal court decision that set aside the 2024 Title IX rules, allowing the agency to revert to the 2020 standards which focus on biological definitions.
Meanwhile, left-wing civil rights advocates, including the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), have condemned the recent move as an “assault” on the dignity and safety of transgender-identifying and non-binary-identifying students, arguing that the federal government is signaling that their protection is now optional.
Ironically, the NWLC’s early litigation focused on opening doors that were physically or legally closed to biological women while establishing safety barriers and other sex-based protections. In recent years, however, the organization has pivoted toward a “third wave” feminist framework. Critics maintain that this shift prioritizes the interests of biological males with gender dysphoria over the needs of biological women — a departure from the group’s founding principles. Ultimately, this transition reflects a broader left-wing global movement toward “gender justice,” a definition that encompasses males who identify as transgender women, as well as “non-binary” individuals.
“This is part of the Trump administration’s assault on education and assault on those who are most vulnerable to experiencing discrimination and harassment, including trans students. They’ve made their intention very clear in wanting to erase protections for trans people,” said Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the NWLC.
While some districts named in the announcement, such as Sacramento City Unified, have stubbornly vowed to keep their own local “protections regardless of the federal rollback,” others have already begun dismantling gender-identity policies in anticipation of the new federal stance.
Moving forward, the Department of Education indicated it will reallocate its investigative resources toward protecting female sports and ensuring that intimate, vulnerable spaces like female locker rooms and bathrooms remain segregated by biological sex.
The specific schools and districts named in the announcement are:
- Taft College (California)
- Sacramento City Unified School District (California)
- La Mesa-Spring Valley School District (California)
- Delaware Valley School District (Pennsylvania)
- Cape Henlopen School District (Delaware)
- Fife School District (Washington)
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