Federal protections of transgender students are launching where courts haven’t blocked them

New federal protections for transgender students at U.S. schools and colleges will take effect Thursday with muted impact because judges have temporarily blocked enforcement in 21 states and hundreds of individual colleges and schools across the country.

The regulation also adds protections for pregnant students and students who are parents, and details how schools must respond to sexual misconduct complaints.

For schools, the impact of the court challenges could be a combination of confusion and inertia in terms of compliance as the academic year begins.

“I think it is likely that school district-to-school district or state-to-state, we’re going to see more or less a continuation of the current status quo,” said Elana Redfield, federal policy director at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

The rights of transgender people — and especially young people — have become a major political battleground in recent years as trans visibility has increased. Most Republican-controlled states have banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, and several have adopted policies limiting which school bathrooms trans people can use and barring trans girls from some sports competitions.

In April, President Joe Biden’s administration sought to settle some of the contention with a regulation to safeguard rights of LGBTQ+ students under Title IX, the 1972 law against sex discrimination in schools that receive federal money. The rule was two years in the making and drew 240,000 responses — a record for the Education Department.

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