Biden administration withdraws proposed regulations on transgender athletes, student debt

The Biden administration on Friday withdrew a pending regulation governing transgender athletes, abandoning an effort to provide some protections for transgender students that the incoming Trump administration has said it opposes.

The administration also withdrew a proposal to cancel student debt for roughly 38 million Americans, which the Education Department said was due to “operational challenges.”

“With the time remaining in this administration, the Department is focused on several priorities including court-ordered settlements and helping borrowers manage the final elements of the return to repayment,” the department wrote in its explanation.

On the transgender athlete regulation — a proposal that involved amending Title IX, the landmark civil rights law preventing sex discrimination — the Education Department said it received more than 150,000 public comments during a 30-day comment period that “offered a broad spectrum of opinions.”  

It also noted that there are several ongoing lawsuits related to the application of Title IX in the context of gender identity, including several challenging a companion regulation the administration finalized in April that more broadly protects gay and transgender students. 

“In light of the comments received and those various pending court cases, the Department has determined not to regulate on this issue at this time,” the Education Department wrote on Friday. 

The Biden administration unveiled the proposal last April, saying state-level bans on transgender athletes “fail to account for differences among students across grade and education levels.” 

The proposal would have prohibited policies that categorically ban transgender student-athletes from participating on sports teams that match their gender identity but would have still allowed schools to enforce some restrictions, particularly in competitive sports. 

Schools would have still been able to bar trans athletes from competition in pursuit of “important educational objectives,” like fairness or preventing sports-related injuries, a senior administration official said at the time. However, “some objectives, such as the disapproval of transgender students or a desire to harm a particular student, would not qualify,” they said. 

The proposed regulation left parties on both sides of the issue unhappy. Some advocates for transgender rights slammed the regulation for laying out a roadmap for schools to ban trans athletes legally and accused President Biden of backtracking on a promise to protect them. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called the proposal “indefensible and embarrassing.” 

Opponents of the administration’s rule said it undermined fairness in girl’s and women’s sports. 

President-elect Trump has said he opposes allowing transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports and has signaled he will sign an executive order banning participation once he takes office in January. A majority of Americans — 69 percent in one Gallup poll — believe transgender student-athletes should only be permitted to participate in sports that align with their birth sex, rather than their gender identity. 

Twenty-six states since 2020 have passed laws prohibiting transgender students, sometimes as young as kindergarten, from participating on school sports teams that match their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ laws.

Federal judges have temporarily blocked laws from taking effect in Arizona, Utah, West Virginia and Idaho — the latter two of which have asked the Supreme Court to intervene — and a Montana judge permanently barred the state from enforcing its prohibition on trans athletes competing in college sports in 2022. 

In withdrawing its regulations on Friday, the Biden administration prevents the incoming Trump administration from revising and implementing either rule with few bureaucratic hurdles. The next administration can pursue its own regulations on the same issues but will have to start from scratch in a cumbersome rulemaking process that can take up to several years.