The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights rescinded portions of six Obama and Biden-era resolution agreements Tuesday, freeing school districts that had been legally bound to allow biological males in girls’ restrooms and other sex-separated spaces.
The affected institutions are Cape Henlopen School District, Delaware Valley School District, Fife School District, La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified, and Taft College.
“OCR is rescinding portions of six resolution agreements that were reached through the illegal, heavy-handed manipulation of Title IX. The Department will therefore no longer monitor or enforce these agreements,” the department said in a statement.
Kimberly Richey, the Department’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, said the prior agreements had placed “unnecessary and unlawful burdens” on schools.
“Today, the Trump Administration is removing the unnecessary and unlawful burdens that prior Administrations imposed on schools in its relentless pursuit of a radical transgender agenda,” Richey said.
The rescissions cover agreements that, in some cases, date back to the Obama administration. A settlement Delaware Valley School District had with Obama’s Department of Education specifically required the district to let students use restrooms matching their gender identity. The Trump administration wrote to the district in February saying it was voiding that settlement.
The district’s school board voted last month to update its transgender student policies to fall in line with the Trump administration’s requirements.
Richey pointed out the shift in what Title IX enforcement now looks like. “While previous Administrations launched Title IX investigations based on ‘misgendering,’ the Trump Administration is investigating allegations of girls and women being injured by men on their sports team or feeling violated by men in their intimate spaces,” she said.
“No longer will the federal government force educational institutions to violate the law or punish them for upholding it,” she added.
The move fits a broader pattern of the Trump administration unwinding federal gender ideology directives applied to K-12 schools and colleges. Since returning to office, the administration has reissued Title IX guidance to emphasize biological sex rather than gender identity, pulled Biden-era enforcement memos, and redirected OCR investigations toward protecting female students from male-bodied athletes and bathroom intrusions.
School districts that had spent years navigating compliance requirements tied to these agreements now face no federal monitoring obligation under their terms. For some districts, that means reversing policies that had been in place for nearly a decade.
