In his first months in office, President Biden has reversed Trump-administration policies and introduced measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The Chronicle is tracking those developments and breaking down what they mean for higher education.
As part of a sweeping series of executive actions on his first day in office, President Biden issued an order
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As part of a sweeping series of executive actions on his first day in office, President Biden issued an order asserting that Title IX’s protections based on sex extend also to sexual orientation and gender identity — a major win for transgender students and their advocates.
The order effectively reversed the approach of the Trump administration, which had stripped civil-rights protections from transgender students.
Biden’s order used as its basis the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock ruling, which said that Title VII, the civil-rights law covering employment, protects LGBTQ workers from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. By that logic, the order stated, “laws that prohibit sex discrimination, including Title IX … prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”
The Human Rights Campaign called it “the most substantive, wide-ranging executive order concerning sexual orientation and gender identity ever issued by a United States president.”
Critics raised alarms about transgender students’ participation in high-school and college sports, and their use of facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms based on gender identity. Recent lawsuits filed on behalf of female athletes contend that transgender girls and women have an unfair advantage and shouldn’t be allowed to compete in female-only athletic events.
Most colleges already cover sexual orientation and gender identity in their nondiscrimination policies, but Biden’s order will offer LGBTQ students more robust protections and allow them to file federal complaints against their institutions for failing to uphold their rights.
