Trump Unveils Regressive Title IX Regulations on the same Day the Cornell 7 are Revealed to the World

Trump’s Title IX Gives Rapists the Same Rights as their Victims

On September 28, 2026, the same day the world learned of the Cornell 7 sexual assaults, the Trump Administration’s U.S. Department of Education (ED) rescinded Biden’s Title IX rules, thus enabling men who rape to have equal rights to their victims. Despite the preponderance of evidence that even current guidelines are insufficient, the Trump administration is going to gut what protections currently exist thereby removing critical regulations that protected students from sexual harassment and assault, and provided recourse when sexual harassment and assault was reported.

How is this possible? ED Secretary McMahon will now enforce the Title IX rules implemented in 2020 by the then ED Secretary Betsy Devos, which included changes to Title IX that reduced protections for women based on significant input from “men's rights” groups. 

At the time, these changes were found to have profound effects: reducing the number of sexual assault claims, narrowing definitions of sexual harassment, and reducing the rights of sexual assault survivors. Critics of the Trump administration changes highlighted their failure to adequately protect those who suffered sexual assault, including outsized effects on students of color. All of this occurred while an Association of American Universities report found that nearly 26% of college women reported nonconsensual sexual contact, meaning that sexual assault protections were critical to ensuring safety and opportunity. 

Yet, Secretary McMahon claims that her ED will “abide by the original promise and purpose of Title IX: to protect women’s safety, dignity, and educational opportunities in schools that receive federal funding.” Of course, their press release and fact sheet focus on attacking the civil rights of transgender students and the school districts that protect these civil rights based on the Trump administration’s fanatical efforts to eliminate the transgender community and undermine parent’s rights over their own children. Their Project 2025 allies are applauding these changes, despite the fact that the ED will make women and girls less safe in the world and on campus. 

So, it is business as usual regarding their grotesque efforts to eliminate civil rights protections associated with gender identity. However, few understand the vast array of other harmful changes to Title IX.

Other Detrimental Title IX Changes

The Women’s Law Center created a pdf of the atrocious DeVos Title IX regulation changes that will be reinstated. Here are some of the worst changes creating a rollback of rights for girls and women under the reinstated Trump 2020 Title IX, including:

1. Restricts Harassment Claims: The definition of harassment was changed from "unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature" (under Obama) to “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively denies a person equal access to the recipient’s education program or activity.” This change is a “stricter definition of harassment than the one used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to protect adult workplaces” and will result in the dismissal of claims that do not meet this restrictive definition of harassment. The Phoenix Survivors Association indicated this will require “survivors [] to endure repeated and escalating levels of abuse until they can actually seek help from their institutions.” 

2. Reduces School Liability for Title IX: Whether in K-12 or on a college campus, formal Title IX complaints would be limited to campus, educational activity or program. Off-campus sexual assaults would not fall under Title IX complaints. Additionally, “institutions only be held legally responsible for investigating formal complaints and responding to reports that school officials have “actual knowledge” of happening”

3. Requires Victim’s Continued Participation in Education Program: Under the DeVos Title IX rules “students will only be able to file a sexual harassment complaint with a school where they are still “participating in or attempting to participate in the education program or activity” when they file the complaint.” So if they graduate, move, or drop out of the program due to the harassment, students have no Title IX recourse. Under the DeVos Title IX rule, the same rules apply to whether or not the accused is still at the school.

4. Permits Delays of Title IX Investigations: Under the DeVos Title IX rule, schools can delay for an unspecified period of time if there is also an ongoing criminal investigation. For Virginia K-12 students, this will mean a delay, since K-12 employees are mandatory reporters–they must report child sexual abuse to the police.

5. Presumption that No Sexual Harassment Occurred: Despite Title IX claims and investigations being non-criminal, the DeVos Title IX rules will hold them to criminal standards of presumption of innocence of the accused, which results in a presumption of malfeasance and deceit on behalf of the accuser. The accused and accuser are treated the same; therefore, if the accuser remains on campus or has a no-contact order with the accused, the accused also can remain on campus and the no-contact order also applies to the accuser. Thus, Trump's Title IX permits the accused to continue to enjoy the same educational opportunities as the accuser. Therefore, for example, when a student was accused of rape in a Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) bathroom in May 2021, after the DeVos rules were in effect, that student remained in LCPS until they attempted a second sexual assault in October 2021. This is just one real life example of the nightmarish impact of the DeVos Title IX rules. In the case of the Loudoun assaults, the harm was compounded by LCPS “improperly handl[ing]” the Title IX claim and the local sheriff delaying the rape investigation, both of which are not uncommon in sexual assault investigations. LCPS has since amended their Title IX policies to ensure better protection of students.

6. Introduces a Live Hearing and Cross-Examination: Unlike before, Title IX will force a sexual assault victim to undergo a formal courtroom-like hearing at their college, and permits the alleged rapist to formally challenge the victim’s credibility–essentially emotionally assaulting them again–thereby retraumatizing a young woman. They instituted these changes despite a 2011 President Obama Dear Colleague letter that indicated “allowing an alleged perpetrator to question an alleged victim directly may be traumatic or intimidating.” The National Education Association (NEA) called this change “shocking, offensive, and defies logic” and the NEA President Lily Eskelsen García indicated that “Educators across the country are appalled.”

In 2020, the Chairman of the House education committee, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., said that the policy "creates new barriers to justice" for victims, and: 

"While the department's stated intent was to secure due process for those accused of sexual misconduct, the actual effect of its rule will be to erode protections for students, weaken accountability for schools and make it more difficult for survivors seeking redress." 

History of Trump Title IX Changes

A 2020 Time Magazine article summarized the Devos Title IX rules thusly:

“The DeVos administration gave perpetrators of sexual assault a blueprint to block damning evidence against them. In that way, the new regulation institutionalizes gender-based discrimination and creates campuses where sexual violence is not only tolerated, but more likely.”

Before instituting these Title IX changes, Devos elevated discussion of false sexual assault accusations and met with radical men’s rights groups, despite the fact that as many as 95% of college rapes go unreported. At the time, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, wrote a letter to Devos stating, “It is disturbing that the Department of Education would place these radical groups on the same level as those working tirelessly to confront the crisis of sexual assault on our campuses.” Other victims rights advocates echoed his assessment and added concerns that Devos’s approach could fuel “fuel a narrative that sexual assault reports do not need to be taken seriously.”

Showing how little her office cared about sexual assault survivors, Devos’s own top ED civil rights official made this dismissive statement to the New York Times about sexual assault survivors who were brave enough to come forward, “The accusations — 90 percent of them — fall into the category of ‘we were both drunk’.” Her office failed to clear hundreds of sexual assault cases within the required 180 days.

A Dangerous Future for Our Children

Before Title IX was passed, there were few opportunities for girls and women in sports, college, and the working world, but the passage of Title IX changed that by working to eliminate sex-based discrimination, ensuring that all students have equal access and opportunity in education–covering athletics, housing, and scholarships–while providing protections from and recourse for sexual harassment and assault. 

If it is not clear, Title IX has far reaching consequences that reduce discrimination for ALL students, which was why the Biden Administration modified Title IX in 2022 to amend the harmful changes made by DeVos under the Trump Administration, while simultaneously codifying protections for all students, including LGBTQIA students, into law. It enabled the Biden administration to combat “Don’t Say Gay” laws and intentionally discriminatory bathroom bills passed in a number of states.

By repealing the Biden Title IX changes and reinstating the DeVos Title IX regulation, girls and women in K-12 and college will be less safe, less able to get justice when harmed, and will be more vulnerable to harassment, discriminatory education spaces, and sexual assault. 

Imagine this new environment with fewer protections for your daughters when they enter college. Especially, in light of how poorly Cornell University implemented the stricter Biden Title IX regulations that should have given Jane Doe immediate recourse against the Cornell 7 and the 50 fraternity brothers on Snap Chat. Under the reinstated DeVos Title IX, Jane Doe would have no Title IX recourse because the incident occurred at a Fraternity house off-campus. Jane Doe is one of many, when “more than one in four women at a large group of leading universities said they had been sexually assaulted by force or when they were incapacitated while in college” per a study by the Association of American Universities.

This is a strange new world where our daughters will be less safe, and predators will be protected by the ED, Secretary McMahon, and the Commander in Chief. As a mother and a former college student who barely navigated college campuses unscathed, I am terrified for all of us and our children.

“As someone working on this issue for 25 years, I fear these changes will weaken sexual violence protections, create confusion and inequity, and increase the likelihood that survivors will not report. Two steps forward, three steps back.” –Carol Stenger, NEA member and director of the University of Albany’s Advocacy Center for Sexual Violence in her 2018 Open Letter to Betsy DeVos About Campus Sexual Violence