In two cases from and , trans girls challenged state bans that would have prevented them from competing on women’s teams. Lower courts sided with the students, allowing them to continue competing on their existing teams as their cases progressed.   

Encouraged by the Trump administration’s aggressive actions — and the court’s recent ruling upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth — conservatives see the court’s decision to hear the cases as an opportunity to settle a heated national debate and say definitively that Title IX does not pertain to gender identity. 

The Independent Women’s Forum called the news “a watershed moment for women and girls across America.” 

Advocates for LGBTQ students want the lower court decisions to stand. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth and Ninth circuits said Lindsay Hecox, a Boise State University student, and Becky Pepper Jackson, now in high school, would likely succeed in their arguments against the states.

With its 2020 , Idaho became the first state to bar trans girls from playing sports consistent with their gender identities. Idaho’s law includes a provision that requires students to submit to a physical exam to verify their sex in the event of a dispute. That’s a “broader concern” for all girls, said Brian Dittmeier, director of LGBTQI+ Equality at the National Women’s Law Center.

West Virginia’s came a year later. Twenty-five other states have , according to the Movement Advancement Project; two states, Virginia and Alaska, have regulations that also exclude trans girls from girls’ sports. President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon have further elevated the issue with efforts to withhold federal funds from blue states and schools that include trans girls in female sports. 

“The dignity afforded to transgender people is under attack,” Dittmeier said. A ruling in favor of West Virginia and Idaho, he said, would “provide opportunities for states to justify discriminatory laws.”

The court’s decision to hear the cases came the same week the University of Pennsylvania, under pressure from McMahon, to no longer allow trans women to compete on women’s teams. As part of the deal, the university erased trans swimmer and issued apologies to swimmers who lost to her.  

States not backing down

The administration’s case against Maine over its will go to trial next year, and California on Monday its trans-inclusive sports policies or issue apologies. The state drew in May when a trans girl took gold in two events at a state track and field championship. 

The state, however, also created a temporary rule that allowed other girls to compete even if they did not initially qualify. The rule allowed cisgender girls to earn whatever medal they would have received if trans athletes had not competed. As a result, A.B. Hernandez, the trans competitor, shared the podium with other first-place winners. 

That’s the kind of accommodation more states might explore, depending on the outcome of the cases, said Doriane Coleman, a Duke University law professor. She supports , but thinks that elite sports require special consideration.

She argued that while it’s hard to justify excluding a trans girl from afterschool sports teams, restrictions make sense in competitive athletics. 

“We’ve been in a period where trans girls, their parents, their doctors and their coaches haven’t been allowed, by the advocates, to want anything other than being in girls and women’s sports,” she said. 

She pointed to showing that while puberty blockers and hormones diminish some of the physical advantage trans female athletes have over cisgender girls, “the overall advantage is always retained.” 

Others argue that there’s to say trans girls have a consistent advantage and that socioeconomic issues, such as access to better coaching and training opportunities, also play a role.

The Biden administration tried to strike a compromise in the debate with a draft of a Title IX sports rule in 2023. It would have allowed elementary-age students and most middle schoolers to play sports consistent with their gender identity. In high school, the plan said districts could make a case for excluding trans athletes if they could show how that decision would have achieved an “important educational objective.” Officials the proposed rule before Trump took office.

Just days after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order saying that Title IX — and the federal government in general — recognizes only two sexes and that they can’t be changed. 

Now the Supreme Court, which said in 2020 that discrimination against LGBTQ employees on the basis of sex is wrong in the workplace, will wrestle with the issue. Both Idaho and West Virginia ask the court whether requiring students to compete with the sex they were assigned at birth violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. The West Virginia case also asks if Title IX allows states to exclude trans girls from girls’ sports.

Dittmeier, at the National Women’s Law Center, said there are clear differences between the trans sports cases and In that case, the court upheld a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, allowing states to make their own decisions on the issue. Advocates for trans youth argued that the treatments can be medically necessary and that a ban violates the Equal Protection Clause.  

When the court ruled in favor of Tennessee, it didn’t consider whether the law discriminated against children and teens based on their sex. The court accepted the state’s argument that the ban was based on age or how puberty blockers or hormones were used.

The court won’t be able to avoid the issue of sex in the sports cases. The states, Dittmeier said, have to “meet a higher burden to justify the discriminatory action.” Pepper-Jackson, for example, has an amended birth certificate and has identified as a girl since the third grade. When the Fourth Circuit ruled in the case last year, Judge Toby Heytens wrote “Offering B.P.J. a ‘choice’ between not participating in sports and participating only on boys teams is no real choice at all.”

Less than a day later, Trump appeared to rescind the Office of Management and Budget that set the funding “pause” in motion.

But just 30 minutes after that, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to …rescind the rescission. “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze,” she posted. “It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.”

She described her post as an attempt to “end the confusion.”

It didn’t.

“For an administration that wants to make the argument that public education is dysfunctional and not serving our students well, they are amplifying and contributing to that narrative,” said Amy Loyd, CEO of All4Ed, a policy and advocacy organization. Until last October, she served in the Department of Education as assistant secretary for the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education.

For now, it’s unclear which programs will be affected as the new administration takes stock of spending it deems wasteful or contrary to the president’s agenda. Those goals include freeing up funds for , ending “wokeness” and passing a tax cut package. Start-up funds for charter schools, school lunches, funding for homeless students and hundreds of other federal grants “will be reviewed by department leadership for alignment with Trump administration priorities,” said education department spokeswoman Madison Biederman. 

OMB said it spared major “formula” grants, like Title I for low-income students, special education funding and Impact Aid to districts serving military families. While the administration said Head Start wouldn’t be impacted, the preschool program among thousands to be reviewed.

The administration originally gave agencies until Feb. 7 to identify grants that advance, among other things, “Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies.” Over several chaotic hours, district leaders and advocates tried to interpret whether their programs would be cut while coming to terms with the enormity of the president’s actions.

“This is more than a typical partisan divide,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “This is an unusual and unprecedented power grab and every member of Congress should be concerned.”

Challenging the administration’s pause on funding Congress had already appropriated, three associations sued Tuesday, asking for a temporary restraining order “to maintain the status quo.” Just before 5 p.m., as the freeze was about to start, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan granted the request, noting the “specter of irreparable harm.”

Afterschool programs, food banks and organizations that arrange for children to be driven to cancer treatment centers are among those that would be impacted, said Rick Cohen, a spokesman for the National Council of Nonprofits, one of the groups that filed . Another plaintiff, Main Street Alliance, a network of small businesses, said its members include child care centers that serve low-income families using federal assistance so they can work. 

‘Grave situation’

For many leaders, Tuesday was a rollercoaster.

Just after lunch, Marvin Connelly, superintendent of the Cumberland County Schools in North Carolina, was trying to figure out how he’d handle a potential freeze on over $2 million in Impact Aid — funds that help make up for lost property tax revenue when there’s a nearby military installation. A high-poverty district, Cumberland schools serve over 8,000 children of active service members stationed at Fort Liberty.

“We could really be in a grave situation,” he said. Less than two hours later, he learned the funds would not be affected.

Meanwhile Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, which supports homeless students, was participating on a panel at a conference in Washington when some nonprofit leaders told her they were unable to access federal funds for homeless youth and families.

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The effort to pause funding followed the president’s first-day that prohibits federal spending on diversity, equity and inclusion. On Thursday, the administration hundreds of guidance documents, reports and training materials related to DEI and put staff members focusing on equity within the department on leave.

“Who knew dismantling could happen this quickly?” Ian Rowe, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the founder of a network of charter schools, told �鶹��Ʒ. “If these moves put America on a path to becoming a colorblind society, that is a very good thing.”

Many conservatives argue such programs amount to a form of illegal discrimination and waste money. Neera Deshpande, a policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, pointed to that shows the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia spent $6.4 million to staff its equity office.

“What is that money accomplishing besides adding layers of bureaucracy to the school system, burdening teachers, and taking away time and money from schools that could be used for instructional purposes or even extracurricular activities for students?” she asked. “Every dollar that is allocated toward DEI is a dollar that’s not allocated toward … teacher salaries or arts programs or literacy support or sports.”

The reversal in priorities at the federal level has left some nonprofit leaders in a bind. When former President Joe Biden was in office, the director of a teacher apprenticeship initiative applied for a Department of Labor grant to help recruit a diverse pool of potential teachers. Now, he doesn’t know whether that emphasis will hurt his application.

“I hope they can strike a balance with sanity here,” said the man, who asked not to be named to keep from jeopardizing the grant. “I’m not going to talk about the diversity part, but we still have a significant crisis in the teacher pipeline. We have to attract individuals into this profession.”

‘Top-down review’

With more than targeted for potential review, it’s unclear which might ultimately be left on the chopping block.

But at least one Republican said the National School Lunch Program shouldn’t be off limits. On , Georgia GOP Rep. Rich McCormick suggested low-income students shouldn’t depend on schools for meals. The program, which costs roughly $17 billion, provides free and reduced-price meals for over 28 million children during the school year and extends services through the summer with the help of parks, recreation centers and other community organizations.

“You’re telling me that kids who stay at home instead of going to work at Burger King, McDonald’s, during the summer, should stay at home and get their free lunch instead of going to work?” he asked. “I think we need to have a top-down review.”

Other advocates noted that while federal funds make up only about 10% of a district’s operating budget, some school systems rely on those dollars more than others. In 2023, AASA, the School Superintendents Association, created showing that overall, federal funds account for a larger share of district budgets in GOP-led states, mainly those in the South and West.

“Any conversation about federal funding levels — whether a cut in overall level or a proposal to freeze access — requires us to be very honest about the role of federal dollars in local school districts, and to be candid about the facts of who … is more reliant on federal dollars,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director for advocacy governance at AASA.

Responding to news reports that the president had rescinded the freeze memo, Leavitt, the press secretary, posted that the president’s executive orders nonetheless “remain in full force and effect.” 

Ng doesn’t know where that leaves the nation’s schools, but she’s run out of patience. Regarding Leavitt’s post, she asked, “Did it attempt to end confusion, or add a layer for today?”

One-third of parents recently surveyed by reported their child care costs rose over the past year, following the expiration of the first batch of pandemic-era child care funding. Among parents of kids under age 5, that number is even higher (37%). 

Just over half of parents with very young children reported dealing with at least one significant challenge with child care over the past year, including unexpected provider closures and trouble finding child care options.

“This is all a result of this decade of disinvestment,” said Melissa Boteach, the center’s vice president for Income Security and Child Care/Early Learning. “And the pandemic laid bare and exacerbated that, but ultimately to solve the problem we need not just a patchwork to help address the cliff that we’re about to drive off of, but long-term and sustained, robust public funding that actually builds a child care system that serves families and the economy.”

The expiring funds were part of the 2021 , a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package, which included roughly $39 billion in direct support for child care relief. 

Marking the largest investment since World War II, the funding was split into two buckets: The first $24 billion primarily went to providers to help them stay afloat during and after the COVID shutdowns and expired last September. On Monday, the remaining $15 billion expired, which provided additional funding to the existing Child Care and Development Block Grant program, the primary federal grant program that allocates flexible funding to states, allowing them to provide subsidized child care to low-income families with children under 13.

This funding helped to stabilize 220,000 child care programs, impacting 10 million children and over a million families, according to a of federal data by the National Women’s Law Center and The organizations also found that 29% of families faced higher tuition in the month after the first expiration of funding last September, with to affordable care.

This week’s deadline in particular will hit states’ child care systems, according to Boteach, who said, “Even in anticipation of this money expiring, some states are starting to roll back those improvements, which again means that — particularly for families eligible for a subsidy — they’re going to see anything from growing wait lists to higher co-pays to a shrinking supply, because providers aren’t getting reimbursed at the rate needed to afford to stay in business.”

Susan Gale Perry, CEO of , described the situation in Nevada, where eligibility for subsidized child care programs is returning to pre-pandemic criteria as relief funds wind down. “[This] means that families who have the least are going to need to be paying more for child care,” she said.

Across the country, she added, states were able to implement creative solutions with the help of pandemic relief revenue. “The bright spots that we’re seeing are states that are continuing to pick up some of those great ideas and move forward with them using state funds. So we know we need a solution that includes a combination of federal and state and private and parent fees to really make child care work the way it needs to for this country.”

The latest survey was administered to better understand the ongoing impact of these expirations. It was designed by the Law Center and administered by Morning Consult between Sept. 13 and 15, reaching 4,443 adults nationally, 970 of whom are parents with children 13 years old or younger and 413 of whom have kids 5 or younger. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.5% and larger for subgroups. 

Over one-third of parents surveyed reported some knowledge of the expiring funds and a majority of parents (61%) expressed concern about Monday’s deadline. Black parents were particularly impacted, with 71% reporting they are very or somewhat concerned.

A plurality of parents (42%) said that candidates running for office are not talking enough about the issue of child care. 

“This is a very big-line item in families’ budgets,” Boteach said, “and if they’re not hearing from candidates about what their specific plans are, that’s a liability for those candidates.” 

Despite vastly differing views about how to make parenthood more affordable in this year’s presidential race, both Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican vice president candidate JD Vance have supported of the Child Tax Credit. Harris’s economic agenda includes a proposal to raise the credit to as much as $3,600 and $6,000 in a child’s first year. Vance said he wants to raise the credit to $5,000 but opposes government spending on child care, arguing children benefit from having a parent at home with them.

Boteach noted that yesterday’s funding dropoff comes amid rising wages nationally for low-paid sectors. To remain competitive, child care employers would need to raise wages, even as they lose funding, saddling parents with the increased costs, she said. 

Ultimately, she noted, the costs of the “broken market” of child care “are borne entirely by parents — in the form of higher fees — and providers — in the form of poverty wages.” 

And often it’s women in the workforce who pay the ultimate price, she added: “Women are 90% of the early education workforce, and it’s disproportionately Black, brown and immigrant women. Women are [also] the ones who are more likely to be pushed out of the labor market when they can’t find affordable child care options.”

A group of girls from Berkeley High School will go before a federal judge in California this Thursday to argue that former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos left victims of sexual assault or harassment with fewer protections and shielded those accused of misconduct.

The state of Texas, led by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, has tried to join the case as a defendant, arguing President Joe Biden’s justice department won’t provide a “robust defense” of the DeVos’s interpretation of the rule, known as Title IX, because it has “expressed open hostility to the provisions.”

As it happens, the San Francisco court is hearing the case just as Biden’s education department launches a weeklong public comment period on the future of Title IX — a key step in the administration’s promise to rewrite the controversial rule.

But the process this time is more than just a chance for Democrats to wipe away what DeVos said would be her . The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 protecting gay and transgender employees against discrimination — and the justice department’s that the opinion extends to schools — shows that the policy landscape has grown more complicated than it was even in 2017.

“The stakes have always been high,” said Liz King, the senior program director for education at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “This is a question of whether or not students will have access to an education free from discrimination.”

The White House is signalling the importance it attaches to the measure by the extensive time it is granting for public input and by its intention to bring back an expert hand who was instrumental in writing guidance that held colleges responsible for addressing on-campus sexual violence.

An ‘effort in public engagement’

While she’s not yet been confirmed, Catherine Lhamon is poised to return to her former position as the education department’s assistant secretary for civil rights. Lhamon has briefly served as deputy director for racial justice and equity on the White House Domestic Policy Council. Her nomination “shows how serious the Biden administration is taking civil rights,” said Shiwali Patel, senior counsel with the National Women’s Law Center.

The especially wants to hear this week about discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the notice.

Civil rights attorney Seth Galanter, with the National Center for Youth Law, called this week’s hearing “an extraordinary effort in public engagement.”

“As far as I know, there’s not been public hearings held around Title IX since the 1970s, when the department was first issuing regulations,” said Galanter, who is representing the Berkeley students. “It will be a great opportunity for people who don’t normally participate in the notice-and-comment process to have their voices heard directly by the leadership of the department.”

DeVos held one day of to hear from victims of sexual harassment and assault and from men’s rights groups that argued some students had been being falsely accused of misconduct.

On Zoom ‘with a harasser’

Before DeVos finalized the current rule, over 124,000 public comments were submitted, with many in opposition. Multiple lawsuits — including one involving and the District of Columbia — were filed in protest.

In the Berkeley students’ case, the complaint said victims are often assigned to the same classrooms as the students who sexually assaulted them off campus and that remote learning hasn’t alleviated the trauma that some victims experience.

“Even when learning takes place primarily online, as it does this school year due to COVID-19, victims are required to be in small video ‘breakout rooms’ with their harasser,” according to the complaint.

The justice department said Texas has no “claim or defense” in the Berkeley case. The state made the same argument in opposing the DeVos rule in Massachusetts, but a federal judge denied the motion. The state, however, successfully intervened in the multi-state case, now on hold as the administration works to rewrite the regulation.

Others don’t want to see the DeVos rule torn down because they say it recognizes the rights of those unfairly accused of sexual misconduct.

Reversing the rule could “once again force schools to deprive accused students and faculty of constitutionally guaranteed safeguards like the right to confront the evidence used against them,” said Caleb Kruckenberg, an attorney with the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He added that despite multiple federal courts upholding due process in campus disciplinary hearings, “the department seems poised to ignore those bedrock constitutional principles.”

As Kruckenberg noted, federal courts in recent years have shown greater deference toward the accused, agreeing that some colleges demonstrated against males when handling complaints. But Patel, whose organization is representing plaintiffs in the Massachusetts case, said institutions can protect due process rights while still providing fairness to victims.

“Sexual harassment is very pervasive in K-12 schools,” she said, “and rather than requiring schools to do more reporting, the DeVos changes swept sex harassment under the rug.”

released last year showed incidents of sexual violence in K-12 schools increased by more than half between the 2015-16 and 2017-18 school years, and the number of rapes or attempted rapes increased from almost 400 to nearly 800.

The DeVos rule limited what counts as sexual misconduct under Title IX. School officials, for example, are no longer obligated to investigate incidents that occur , but with virtual school, that distinction is less clear. In a recently issued , the department indicated that schools must investigate complaints of discrimination or harassment that occur during remote learning.

Disagreement over Title IX is one reason why Congress didn’t reauthorize the Higher Education Act while former Sen. Lamar Alexander chaired the education committee, leaving both the Trump and Biden administrations to implement the policy through regulation. That means if a Republican administration returns to the White House in four years, the pendulum could swing back the other way.

The back-and-forth over the policy probably means that no matter what happens, the issue is destined to continue to play out in court.

“We’ll have to wait and see what the Biden administration does,” said Kenneth Marcus, who led the Office for Civil Rights under DeVos. “But if they repeal the Trump Title IX regulations and replace it with something that looks more like the Obama rules, then we will certainly see this either struck down by the courts or reversed as soon as Republicans regain control.”

‘A different landscape’

The comment period is also taking place as debate continues to escalate over whether transgender girls should be allowed to compete against biological girls in high school and college sports — a question Title IX didn’t previously address.

“This is a different landscape than it was in 2016,” when President Donald Trump was elected, said Sasha Buckert, a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization focusing on LGBTQ issues. “The court has weighed in.”

The day he took office, President Joe Biden issued an regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s workplace discrimination ruling in , stating, “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, locker room or school sports.”

But at least 20 states are considering or have already passed legislation banning students born biologically male from competing against females. And the issue has sparked heated exchanges between Republicans and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona the two times he’s appeared before Congress.

“We can create transgender leagues, I don’t mind,” Congressman Andy Harris of Maryland told Cardona during an appropriations on the federal budget in early May. He added that his daughter is an NCAA all-American athlete, who in no way “could compete against biological males,” and that he was disappointed in Cardona’s stance on the issue.

The NCAA isn’t considering separate leagues, but does testosterone suppression treatment for transgender women to compete in women’s sports at the college level. High school athletic associations began allowing trans girls to compete in events for girls over , and some experts argue there’s of trans women dominating women’s sports.

Cardona hasn’t veered from the firm position he took during his confirmation hearing. “Transgender students deserve every opportunity to participate in all school activities,” he told Harris.

Republicans have introduced the , which would only define sex under Title IX as those born male or female, not gender identity. But the House has already passed , which would extend civil rights protections in housing, education and employment to LGBTQ people and mostly clarifies what the courts have already decided, Buckert said.

If passed, the bill “would hopefully prevent all of these lawsuits and would prevent [the Supreme Court] from creating some kind of horrific carve-out in Title IX,” she said, adding she’s concerned Congress could say “discrimination against transgender people in general is against the law, but not in athletics.”