This piece was originally posted in the Washington Blade
I’m a gay man, I’m a graduate student, here is why I’m afraid of what the Trump administration is doing with the Office of Civil Rights.
I consider myself lucky to have grown up as a gay man in the time that I did. As a millennial, I came of age at the tail end of when it was still almost entirely socially unacceptable to be gay. That decision, 17 years ago, has defined much of my life since. While it is nowhere near perfect, I am mostly happy with the current times as a gay man, though I often lament for how my trans brothers and sisters are treated.
That’s why I’m so terrified with some of the moves the Trump administration has made, especially most recently with its rescission of Title IX provisions. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a landmark civil rights law that prevents any school or education program from discriminating on the basis of sex if they receive federal funding. It is a funding pact that effectively remodeled the American education landscape, providing equal opportunity for male and female athletes, outlawing discriminatory admissions practices, ensuring pregnant people have accommodations on campuses, and finally compelling schools to address and investigate sexual assault or harrassment in schools. In short, Title IX exists to create gender and sex based equity primarily in schools that receive federal funding; schools found to have been routinely violating this pact are subject to penalties, including even losing federal funding.
Recently, K-12 Dive reported that the Department of Education rescinded the Title IX provisions that established anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students. In principle, the provisions barred discrimination against LGBTQ+ students in educational facilities that receive federal funding. Going by the Department’s public statements, Education Secretary Linda McMahon believes that these provisions, which were advanced by the past two Democratic administrations “distorted the law to police discrimination on the basis of ‘gender identity.’”
Essentially, the Trump administration is signaling its inclination to withhold student loans, the lifeblood of higher education finance, from schools that don’t make life miserable for trans students. The administration’s desire to turn back the clock is a real slap in the face of my community, and the activists who fought fiercely for acceptance, protection, and the recognition of gay rights. Beyond the usual anti-queer, right wing slop, this is an indicator that the administration is fundamentally trying to erase the queer identity. This will have unequivocally bleak effects on queer youth.
A bit of background might help. In 2019, the Supreme Court made a landmark employment law ruling in Bostock v Clayton County, which held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The plain text of Title VII only protects against discrimination on the basis of “sex,” but in Bostock, the court found that to be a gay employee requires first being a man, and to be a lesbian employee requires first being a woman. Likewise, to be discriminated against for trans or non-binary identity is to be discriminated against because your gender identity does not match your birth sex. Thus, the court held that workplace discrimination against LGBTQ identities are necessarily forms of sex discrimination, so protections for LGBTQ+ people in the workplace should be read into Title VII’s existing language.
This landmark decision was one of the biggest victories for advocates for LGBTQ employees in more than 50 years. Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch even wrote for the majority that “an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” showing how patently unfair the state of LGBTQ employment was prior to the ruling. Personally, I have navigated so many spaces in fear of what could happen to me if anyone found out that I’m gay, but since Bostock, I’ve been so much more at ease.
But Bostock only considered Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the section that prohibits discrimination in employment. It didn’t consider Title IX, which prohibits discrimination at colleges and universities that receive federal funding, even though both Title VII and Title IX are parts of the same statute. As a result, Bostock only prohibited homophobia and transphobia in employment practices, not on college campuses.
Early in his administration, President Joe Biden signed an executive order in hopes of rectifying that limitation. He directed heads of federal agencies to review workforce actions to ensure that departments were complying with the Bostock rule – essentially, even though Bostock only requires anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people in employment, Biden established a national policy of voluntarily extending the same anti-discrimination protections into other parts of American life governed by the Civil Rights Act.
As part of that effort, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum instructing federal agencies to apply Bostock to both Title VII and Title IX (the latter of course is enforced by the Office of Civil Rights in the Education Department). Later, in 2024, the Department of Education amended Title IX regulations to explicitly protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in federally funded buildings (most obviously schools).
The result of all these legal technicalities is that under the Biden rules, OCR must protect trans students who want to use the bathroom of their choice; a gay student cannot be discriminated against for being gay; and most importantly, a student cannot be rejected from a school, or expelled, for simply being who they are.
This small change is actually revolutionary for LGBTQ+ students. Beyond the fact that the second leading cause of death among LGBTQ youth is suicide, queer kids are twice as likely to be called names, verbally harassed, or physically assaulted. This often leads to increased substance abuse, self-harm, chronic absenteeism, and poor academic performance. With younger people coming out earlier than ever, it is critically important that we ensure we are protecting our queer youth.
The administration wants society to backslide. They want these kids to face discrimination. Never mind that one of Trump’s own Supreme Court picks wrote the majority opinion in Bostock, he and his cronies think it is perfectly fine for LGBTQ students to face harassment because they (falsely) claim the Biden administration had a warped interpretation ofBostock. After all, this is the same administration that cut funding to the 988 suicide hotline, banned trans people from serving in the military, and systematically weaponizes federal law against trans people across the country.
Republican-led states are clearly treating this as an opportunity to declare war on queer students as well. In May, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed the Student Physical Privacy Act which mandates “multi-person facilities be designated for use by one sex at a time, defined by biological sex at birth. It also requires schools and colleges to provide single-user restrooms or changing spaces for students who request them.” In practice, trans students in South Carolina are basically relegated to port-a-potties. State Sen. Jason Elliot of Greenville said, “[T]he bill would allow the use of a portable restroom facility, if necessary, to meet that need [for a trans student]. So it’s not going to be an overly burdensome financial responsibility on K-12 schools or colleges or universities.” Rather than address the Palmetto state’s biggest actual policy issues like cost of living, health care accessibility, poor response to extreme weather events, dependency on tourism and a state graduation rate of less than 85%, they choose to attack trans kids, which again will only exacerbate the latter of these problems.
As a gay man, I find this troubling and deeply demoralizing. The second Trump administration is doing everything in its power to harm an already deeply marginalized community. Sending signals to state governments as well means Americans are rolling back the years to a time in which young LGBTQ people were fearful to be who they are. It’s the younger generations who are going to feel the immediate effects of these policies – even if a future Democratic administration reinstates the Biden-era policies, you only get the four years of high school or college once. If your time as a young person coincides with this administration and its bigotry, that can leave an indelible mark on your life and understanding of yourself in this country.
Am I protected as an adult? Well, yes, but as an educational policy wonk and gay man, I fear for younger queer people who just want to live authentically. The next Democratic administration must make reversing these changes to Title IX a priority. Any Democrat who claims to care about queer people, must ensure that these students are protected.