After President Richard M. Nixon signed Title IX into law in 1972, the federal civil rights law banning sex discrimination in education came to be viewed as a potent tool to expand the participation of girls and women in sports.
Four decades later, a student-led movement opposing gender-based violence on college campuses spurred the Obama administration to use the law to pressure universities to crack down on sexual assault.
Fast-forward another 15 years, and President Trump is again deploying the broad powers of Title IX — pulling back the focus on sexual misconduct and instead dismantling protections for transgender students.
The divergent priorities show how ideologies of different presidents have shaped federal enforcement of Title IX, a landmark civil rights law receiving renewed attention after a Cornell University student alleged that she was sexually assaulted by multiple members of a fraternity. The law’s broad statutory language has enabled successive administrations to reinterpret its scope — and rewrite enforcement guidelines — with each shift in the cultural landscape, including the #MeToo movement and its subsequent backlash.
College officials say the swinging pendulum of federal enforcement has created confusion on campuses, sowing doubt among students considering whether to report incidents.
“I have heard from students that they are unsure or even scared about reporting to their school’s Title IX office to begin with, for fear of a retraumatizing process that will not be supportive,” said Emma Grasso Levine, senior manager of Know Your IX, a youth-led victims’ rights group.
Title IX requires that schools establish a process outside of criminal courts to determine responsibility for sexual misconduct, impose discipline and provide support services that restore a survivor’s right to equal access to education.
The allegation of a gang rape at Cornell in 2024 resulted in expulsions for two students and lighter punishments for others, according to records of the school’s Title IX investigation that were obtained by The New York Times. Last month, the former student, known as Jane Doe, sued the school and others, arguing that Cornell failed to enforce its procedures for responding to allegations of sexual violence.
Jane Doe’s lawyer, Thomas P. Giuffra, told The Times in an email that she dropped out in February 2025 after seeing the students she had accused on campus and fearing that others involved might be in her classes. None of the accused men have been charged with a crime, and all have denied wrongdoing.
Michael Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell, said last week in an interview with The Times that he should have been told that Jane Doe had dropped out. Earlier this month, Cornell named Sally Yates, a former acting attorney general, to review the university’s handling of the allegations under Title IX and other federal and state laws.
“If, in fact, a student has withdrawn because she feels unsafe at the outcome of the Title IX process or there is specific concerns around the individuals — you know, there were no-contact orders for those individuals — I think that’s something that leadership should be made aware of,” Dr. Kotlikoff said.
Title IX was passed as part of an enormous education bill in 1972. In an article explaining the legislation’s major provisions published at the time, The New York Times listed the ban on sex discrimination as the 11th item. President Nixon’s signing statement did not mention Title IX.
But the law took years to fully take shape. Initially, Title IX forced universities to dismantle sex-based admissions caps and expand women’s sports.
The phrase “sexual harassment” was not coined until 1975, when an instructor at Cornell, Lin Farley, spoke out about female students and staff being fired, demoted or forced to quit because of unwanted advances from male bosses and co-workers. Two years later, federal courts started allowing cases of sexual harassment under Title IX.
For the next three decades, Republican and Democratic administrations told schools that Title IX banned sexual harassment. But women’s rights activists and campus protesters increasingly complained that federal oversight was lax.
After Delta Kappa Epsilon pledges at Yale University marched across campus in 2010 chanting, “No means yes; yes means anal,” activists cited the episode to argue that the threat of sexual assault created a hostile learning environment for women.
In 2011, Russlynn Ali, President Barack Obama’s head of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, issued a 19-page public letter stating that sexual violence and harassment created an environment so hostile that they jeopardized women’s access to education and violated Title IX.
The letter required schools to adopt procedures to file complaints, designate an official to coordinate Title IX compliance and put in place sexual harassment training programs.
The letter also said schools should evaluate complaints based on a “preponderance of evidence,” a standard of proof that means it was more likely than not that sexual harassment had occurred. Some schools at the time used the higher “clear and convincing” standard of proof.
Catherine E. Lhamon, who succeeded Ms. Ali as the Education Department’s top civil rights lawyer, threatened to strip federal funding from universities that failed to adequately respond to sexual misconduct allegations.
More than a decade later, lawyers and university officials interviewed for this article recalled Ms. Lhamon’s description of the “huge hammer” she could use to force compliance.
Asked about those comments, Ms. Lhamon said, “That sounds exactly like me.”
“I was very comfortable withholding funds from universities that violated the law,” said Ms. Lhamon, now the executive director of the Edley Center on Law and Democracy at the University of California, Berkeley.
“But this was not political for me,” she continued. “It did not matter — red or blue state, red or blue jurisdiction. If you were violating the law and would not come into compliance, this was the lever we had to enforce. It was, 100 percent, something I was very serious about.”
But a backlash was underway, with legal scholars, civil liberties groups and faculty associations warning that due process rights were being eroded.
From 2011 to 2020, students filed more than 700 lawsuits claiming universities had mishandled cases in which they had been accused of sexual misconduct, according to a database maintained by Jonathan Taylor, whose group, Title IX for All, advises students accused of violating sexual misconduct policies.
“What we have learned from these lawsuits is that we unfortunately can’t trust universities to do the right thing,” Mr. Taylor said. “They will misrepresent what people say; they will not gather the evidence that they should be gathering; and they won’t put some evidence into the investigation record.”
Mr. Trump, whose first presidential campaign weathered a political storm over an “Access Hollywood” video of him talking about grabbing women without consent — which he dismissed as “locker room talk” — rescinded Ms. Ali’s letter during the first year of his first term.
His administration also rewrote Title IX regulations. Rather than issue a letter, Betsy DeVos, then the education secretary, oversaw an extensive rule-making effort that codified the changes in federal regulations.
“The era of rule by letter is over,” Ms. DeVos said in a speech in 2017. “Through intimidation and coercion, this failed system has clearly pushed schools to overreach.”
The result was a 554-page addition to the Federal Register that provided more protections for the accused. Enacted in 2020, the rule replaced administrative reviews with courtroom-style proceedings that required live hearings in which the accused and accuser could see and hear each other. Lawyers for both sides could present evidence and cross-examine witnesses.
The Trump administration has said the rule ensures fairness, while opponents argue it created an onerous, intimidating environment for victims.
President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration attempted to overhaul those rules again.
But it did not adopt a new rule until 2024, when it was immediately challenged in court. A federal judge blocked the move in 2025, after Mr. Trump had returned to power, and the Republican administration did not appeal the ruling.
Last month, Mr. Trump’s Education Department formally repealed the Biden rule and restored the 2020 standard. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement at the time that the change “faithfully reflects court orders and congressional intent — reducing confusion for parents, students and educational institutions.”
The department is also considering another change that would amend Title IX regulations to incorporate Mr. Trump’s executive order last year that defined “sex” as only male or female.
Civil rights lawyers from both Republican and Democratic administrations called on Congress to clarify Title IX and prevent continued enforcement shifts but disagreed sharply over what those changes should look like — and who was to blame for weaponizing the ban on sex discrimination.
“The back-and-forth over Title IX is an extreme form of what I call regulatory whiplash,” said Kenneth L. Marcus, who was the Education Department’s top civil rights lawyer during Mr. Trump’s first administration. “This is not good for anyone. It reduces consistency, predictability and evenhandedness.”
Chantelle Botticelli, a former New York sex crimes prosecutor who has worked on Title IX issues for universities, including Cornell, said the shifts have been disruptive for students and administrators.
“There’s an erosion of the trust that folks in this space have worked really hard to build over the last decade,” said Ms. Botticelli, now a Title IX consultant with Grand River Solutions.
Scott Schneider, who advises on sex discrimination cases and trains law enforcement on sexual assault investigations, said both sides of the aisle bear some responsibility.
“The public conversation gets dominated by ideologues on both sides of the political spectrum — and the part that waxes and wanes is who has the most influence,” Mr. Schneider said. “I don’t think either one has had a lot of concern for the other side of this, and it shows.”
Debra Kamin contributed reporting.
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