We fought in the courts for a Title IX rule that better protects student survivors.

In 2025, two federal courts in Kentucky and Texas struck down the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX Rule on sex discrimination in schools after conservative individuals, organizations, and states brought nine lawsuits across the country challenging the 2024 Rule. As a result, the Trump administration’s harmful 2020 Title IX Rule on sexual harassment in schools once again took effect nationwide.

When the Trump administration took office in 2025, the federal government stopped defending the 2024 Rule. NWLC, together with our co-counsel Mehri & Skalet, sought to intervene in those two cases to defend the 2024 Rule’s sexual harassment protections on behalf of our clients: Victim Rights Law Center (VRLC), a legal services organization, and Jane Doe, a student survivor of sexual assault. Similarly, our partners at Public Justice sought to intervene to defend the 2024 Rule’s protections for pregnant and postpartum students on behalf of their client, A Better Balance (ABB).

While we awaited the courts’ decisions, Jane Doe’s university completed its Title IX investigation, thereby ending her legal claim in our lawsuits. On April 24, 2026, the Fifth Circuit, where one of our cases is, issued a decision in a case called US v. Texas that will make it impossible in many cases for legal services organizations like VRLC and ABB to seek redress in the courts. (For more on this case and the “standing” doctrine it involves, see below.)  As a result, in May 2026, we made the difficult decision to dismiss our appeals in both cases.

This means the Biden administration’s 2024 Rule will remain entirely struck down, and the Trump administration’s 2020 Rule stays in effect nationwide. This is not the outcome we had hoped for, but we are not done fighting for survivors.

Read on to learn more about student survivors’ Title IX rights under the 2020 Rule and how courts are misusing the law to block civil rights lawsuits.

Students still have Title IX (and non-Title IX!) protections against sexual harassment.

Although the 2024 Title IX Rule was struck down, the Title IX statute, which was passed by Congress in 1972, remains in place. Furthermore, schools are still required to address sexual harassment under the 2020 Rule. This includes responding to sexual harassment that is “severe and pervasive” and that occurs during any school-sponsored activity within the United States, as well as some incidents that occur outside of a school-sponsored activity. In addition, schools must offer supportive measures to all students who report sexual harassment and conduct an investigation if requested by a formal complaint.

In addition, the 2020 Rule allows schools to create other “non-Title IX” policies to address sex-based harassment that falls outside of the 2020 Rule’s purview. For example, schools can and should adopt a “non-Title IX” policy to address sex-based harassment that is “severe or pervasive” (instead of “severe and pervasive”) or that occurs outside of a school-sponsored activity or outside the United States. For these “non-Title IX” incidents, schools can and should follow procedures that are consistent with the 2024 Rule. After all, Title IX is only a floor, not a ceiling, and nothing prevents schools from protecting survivors beyond what Title IX requires.

Finally, many states offer greater protections against sexual harassment than federal law. For example, a number of states have laws that require schools to address “severe or pervasive” sexual harassment, offer a wide range of supportive measures, refrain from punishing survivors who come forward, and/or train students and staff on sexual harassment.

Learn more about students’ Title IX rights without the 2024 Rule, how schools can still support survivors under the 2020 Rule, and what states can do and are doing to protect student survivors.

We will continue working to keep the courthouse doors open for people with valid civil rights claims.

In a troubling trend, some judges are making it harder and harder for people and organizations with whom they ideologically disagree to go to court. One way they’re doing it is through “standing” doctrine. Standing is a judge-made constitutional requirement: in order to bring a case in court, you need to be injured by the other side—you can’t just disagree with the other side in the abstract. In practice, some judges impose harsher standing requirements on folks they disagree with (like legal services organizations) than folks they agree with (like oil companies).

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recently explained in a dissent, when it comes to standing, while the Supreme Court has taken a “stern stance . . . in cases concerning the rights of ordinary citizens,” it takes “a remarkably lenient approach” where the plaintiff is a powerful party it favors. As she put it, “such selectivity begets judicial overreach and erodes public trust in the impartiality of judicial decisionmaking.” Since lower courts follow and can expand on the Supreme Court’s decisions, courts at all levels engage in this selectivity, often finding that wealthy people and multinational corporations have standing—and ordinary people and nonprofits don’t.

This is a disturbing trend. We will continue to make the case for fair standing doctrine so that ordinary people and the organizations that advocate for them can seek justice through the courts.

Court Filings

Tennessee v. McMahon (Eastern District of Kentucky) 

• VRLC and Doe’s Motion to Intervene (2/28/25) 

• States’ Opposition to Intervention (3/6/25) 

• Christian Educators Association International and A.C.’s Opposition to Intervention (3/7/25) 

• Department of Education’s Opposition to Intervention (3/7/25) 
• VRLC and Doe’s Notice of Appeal (3/10/25) 
• VRLC and Doe’s Reply (12/19/25)
• Order Denying Motion to Intervene (2/25/26)

        Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals

• Order Dismissing Appeal (5/13/26)

Carroll Independent School District v. Department of Education

       Northern District of Texas

• • VRLC and Doe’s Motion to Intervene (3/31/25)

• • Department of Education’s Opposition to Intervention (4/17/25)

• • Carroll’s Opposition to Intervention (4/17/25)

• • VRLC and Doe’s Reply (4/24/25)

       Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals

• • VRLC’s Opening Brief on Appeal RE: Intervention (12/15/25)
  • Department of Education’s Opposition to Intervention (2/19/26)
  • Carroll’s Opposition to Intervention (2/19/26)
  • VRLC Reply Brief on Appeal RE: Intervention (4/2/26)
  • Order Dismissing Appeal (5/19/26)

Press Releases

• NWLC Moves to Defend Title IX Protections for Student Survivors (2/28/25)
• NWLC Makes Second Move to Protect Student Survivors and Title IX Rule Safeguards (4/1/25)

Resources

About Your Current Title IX Rights 

• Fact Sheet: Students Still Have Title IX Rights Even Without the Biden Title IX Rule 

• Fact Sheet: Schools Can Still Support Survivors While Complying with the Trump Title IX Rule 

About Our Lawsuits

• Blog: Enough “Awareness” about Sexual Assault. Survivors Need Real Justice.

About the Biden Title IX Rule

• Blog: Here’s What You Need to Know about Biden’s New Title IX Rule 

• Fact Sheet (shorter): Biden’s New Title IX Rule: Fact Sheet and Chart 

• Fact Sheet (longer): The Biden Department of Education’s New and Final Title IX Rules, Explained