Trump pledged to roll back protections for transgender students. They’re flooding crisis hotlines

Transgender youth in the United States have been flooding crisis hotlines since the election of Donald Trump, who made anti-transgender themes central to his campaign. And his administration can swiftly start work on one major change: It can exclude transgender students from Title IX protections, which affect school policies on students’ use of pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms. It is emblematic of all the culture war issues that have been created over the past few years surrounding gender identity versus sex,” said Candice Jackson, a lawyer who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the first Trump administration. Trump also has said he would ask Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and to ban hormonal or surgical intervention for transgender youth in all 50 states. While Biden’s election-year guidance did not extend to transgender students in sports, Trump has promised to end “boys in girls’ sports.” The administration likely would “approach these issues from a traditional understanding” of what Title IX has meant, “with a biological, binary understanding of sex,” said Bob Eitel, who served during the first Trump administration as a senior counselor to the education secretary.