Today It’s Transgender Students, Next It’s You

I am an LGBTQ+ student. I am a proud nonbinary lesbian; if that makes sense to you, it doesn’t have to. Perhaps that's already obvious if you know me in real life or have followed my previous articles. I am a Sexuality, Women's, and Gender Studies major (as well as Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought), and I care deeply about LGBTQ+ rights, gender equity, and social justice. I want to be a civil rights attorney. I probably don’t have to tell you, then, how much I hate President Donald J. Trump. 

During his time in office, our president has rolled back significant protections and policies. Earlier, I found myself Googling “Trump rolled back” and was struck by how long the list was. From environmental protections to Title IX safeguards, the scope of these changes is significant. In this article, I want to focus specifically on Title IX and what these rollbacks mean.

First, what is Title IX? You may have heard about it already. Title IX is a federal civil rights law that was passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. The law prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools, colleges, and universities that receive federal funding, meaning institutions cannot deny students equal opportunities based on their sex.

When many people hear Title IX, they think about sports, and for good reason. The law has helped expand opportunities for women and girls in athletics by requiring schools to provide more equitable access to sports programs and resources. However, Title IX, over the years, has become a critical tool for addressing sexual harassment, sexual assault, dating violence, and other forms of sex-based discrimination on college campuses, which, in the time of the Cornell Seven, is incredibly necessary. For LGBTQ+ students, Title IX has also become increasingly important. It’s more complicated than I understand and can explain in an article. But, it has often been used to argue that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is a form of sex discrimination. This has meant that Title IX has provided greater protections for many students, including transgender and nonbinary students. At its core, Title IX ensures that all students have the opportunity to learn in an environment that is safe, fair, and free from discrimination. 

You have probably heard about the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict transgender women and girls from participating in women's sports. On Feb. 5, 2025, the White House issued an executive order called Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, which claimed that allowing transgender women to compete in women's sports is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls.” The order paints transgender athletes as a major threat to women's athletics, but that framing falls apart the moment you look at the numbers. There simply are not that many transgender athletes competing in school and college sports. 

What makes me angry is that this was never really about solving a widespread problem. Women’s sports face real challenges every day, including inequitable funding, lack of media coverage, harassment, and unequal resources. Instead of tackling those issues, the administration chose to focus on one of the smallest and most vulnerable groups of students in the country. It feels less like a sincere effort to protect women and more like a way to use fear and outrage to justify greater government control over who people are allowed to be. When the federal government starts deciding which identities are legitimate, who can participate in public life, and which students deserve protection under the law, that is not at all expanding freedom. What it is actually just doing is expanding the power of the government to regulate people’s lives.

I cannot help but see this as part of a broader pattern. Transgender people have been turned into a political target not because they represent a significant threat, but because they are unfortunately a convenient one. A tiny population has been transformed into a national controversy, and in the process politicians gain the power to reshape how Title IX is enforced, how schools operate, and how gender is defined by the federal government. That should concern everyone, regardless of where they stand on sports, because once rights and protections can be taken away from one group, they can be taken away from others too.

On Sept. 28, 2026, the Department of Education formally rescinded the Biden-era interpretation of Title IX that recognized discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as a form of sex discrimination. This means the federal government deliberately removed language that had provided protections for LGBTQ+ students and signaled that schools would no longer be expected to treat those forms of discrimination the same way they had under the previous administration.

What is striking about the administration's justification is how little it has to do with the day-to-day experiences of LGBTQ+ students. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the change was necessary because the Biden-era rules allegedly created confusion and that the new regulations would better reflect “court orders and congressional intent.” But for us LGBTQ+ students, this is a question of whether the federal government believes we deserve protection from discrimination at all.

The administration has repeatedly framed these changes as the defense of women and girls. Yet the September 2026 decision went far beyond athletics. According to reporting, the administration officially removed the interpretation that extended Title IX protections to students on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. At the same time, advocacy groups warned that the rollback also weakened broader Title IX enforcement related to sexual harassment and assault. The Biden-era rules had expanded the situations schools were required to investigate, including misconduct connected to school activities that occurred off campus. They also broadened the definition of sex-based harassment and made it easier for schools to respond to complaints. Those changes were swept away along with LGBTQ+ protections.

Think about what that means in practice. A transgender student who is repeatedly harassed at school now has fewer federal protections than they did before. A nonbinary student who faces discrimination because of their gender identity now has fewer avenues for accountability. LGBTQ+ students who once had the federal government explicitly acknowledge that discrimination against them could constitute sex discrimination have watched that recognition disappear.

What frustrates me is how transparently political this all feels. The administration keeps presenting these policies as technical corrections, but the pattern is impossible to ignore. First, executive orders target transgender athletes. Then federal agencies redefine sex as narrowly as possible. Then Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students are formally rescinded. At every step, the same community is singled out. At every step, the rights being restricted belong to LGBTQ+ people.

As an LGBTQ+ student, that is what makes these changes so alarming. The message is not subtle. The government is telling queer and trans students that the protections they once relied on can be revoked whenever they become politically convenient targets. It sends the message that our rights are not grounded in principles of equality and fairness, but are instead subject to political opportunism (and leverage) and attacks designed to score points in culture wars. It tells schools that the federal government is less interested in protecting LGBTQ+ students than it is in targeting them. And for a law that was originally meant to ensure equal access to education, that feels like a complete betrayal of Title IX’s purpose.

At this point, some people may be reading this and thinking, “well, I’m not transgender,” or “I’m not LGBTQ+, so this doesn’t really affect me.” I can sort of understand that reaction. It is tempting to see this as somebody else’s issue. It is tempting to assume that if a policy only targets a group you do not belong to, then you can safely look away.

There is a famous poem by the German pastor Martin Niemöller that begins, “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a communist.” The poem continues as different groups are targeted one by one. Niemöller does not intervene because he is not a member of those groups. By the end, he writes, “then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.” The poem is often taught in history classes as a warning about Nazi Germany, but its lesson is much broader. Rights are rarely taken away from everyone all at once. Rights are usually removed gradually, often beginning with minorities that lack political power. Governments test how much resistance they will encounter. If nobody speaks up, they move further. To be clear, I am not saying that the U.S. in 2026 is Nazi Germany or close to it. What I am saying is that the act of targeting vulnerable groups first is a pattern that appears throughout history. Whether it is racial minorities, religious minorities, immigrants, labor organizers, political dissidents, disabled people, or LGBTQ+ people, governments frequently justify restrictions by claiming they are necessary, reasonable, or only applicable to a small number of people.

The issue is not only whether transgender students can participate in sports. The issue is whether the federal government can decide that a group of people deserves fewer protections under the law than it had yesterday. Today it is transgender students. Tomorrow it might be something else. When the government can remove protections from one group through executive action, reinterpretation, or administrative rule changes, it establishes that those protections were never truly secure in the first place. Rights do not disappear overnight. They erode. They are chipped away piece by piece, regulation by regulation, executive order by executive order. And by the time anyone realizes what has happened, the legal and political infrastructure that makes LGBTQ+ people more vulnerable has already been established, often before we even recognize the full extent of what is being done.

I reject the administration's framing of this issue as “women versus transgender people.” Civil rights protections are not a pie where someone else’s rights take away from yours. Historically, advancements for one marginalized group have often strengthened protections for others as well. The civil rights movement expanded protections that benefited women. The women’s rights movement influenced disability rights activism. LGBTQ+ activists borrowed tactics from earlier racial justice movements. Social progress has rarely happened because people stayed in their own lane and ignored each other's struggles. It has happened because people recognized that injustice directed at one group eventually threatens everyone.

Maybe you do not know any transgender people. Maybe you have never thought much about Title IX. Maybe you think none of these policies will affect your daily life tomorrow. But if you care about equal protection under the law, if you care about limiting government power, if you care about civil rights, then I would argue that this should concern you regardless of your sexual orientation or gender identity.

Because at the end of the day, this article is not only about LGBTQ+ students. It is about what kind of society we want to live in. Do we want a society where civil rights protections expand to include more people, or one where they can be selectively withdrawn whenever a group becomes politically convenient to target?

For me, the answer is obvious. If the government can decide that LGBTQ+ students deserve fewer protections today, there is no guarantee it will stop there tomorrow. And history suggests that it rarely does.