What Title IX changes mean for BYU students

The U.S. Department of Education's Sept. 29 announcement about Title IX sparked debate over what the law should cover.

Title IX regulations were restored to a previous 2020 version due to a court injunction in 2025. However, the Department of Education only recently made the official announcement about this change.

"The lens from the 2020 regulations are very accuser supportive, very accuser focused," Saundra Schuster, J.D., president of the Association of Title IX Administrators, said.

The 2020 regulations, which are currently under effect, narrow Title IX's jurisdiction. However, the BYU Title IX Office can help with cases even if they fall outside of Title IX jurisdiction. This is because cases can be handled under BYU's Sexual Harassment Policy, which follows a similar process to a Title IX case.

A brief history of Title IX

Title IX was passed in 1972 to prevent sex discrimination in education.

Title IX was not originally thought of in terms of sexual harassment or assault. This changed in a 1992 case, when the Supreme Court ruled Title IX could apply to cases of sexual harassment because it denies people access to education in practice.

Ashlee Taylor, the executive director of The Refuge Utah, explained the purpose of Title IX.

"Title IX is really there to make sure that individuals can have access to schooling and that they feel safe in attending their school and not feel that sexual harassment or sexual violence can occur within the school setting," Taylor said.

Under the Trump administration in 2020, the Department of Education passed new regulations on how Title IX was applied.

"The regulations were published in May of 2020, and those rules were really written with a different lens a lens toward protecting the rights of an accused individual," Schuster said.

When former President Joe Biden was in office, his administration changed the regulations again in 2024, expanding schools' jurisdiction to investigate certain sexual assaults and making reporting easier.

Soon after the 2024 regulations were made law, courts across the country began striking the regulations down through court injunctions.

"During President Trump's first term, 2016 to close to 2020, he had the opportunity to appoint a lot of federal judges. All those federal judges had a very conservative viewpoint," Schuster said. "These very conservative judges would strike (the 2024 regulations) down again. It was very, very politically-focused and politically-motivated."

In 2025, a court in Tennessee issued a nationwide injunction, which invalidated the 2024 regulations and made the 2020 regulations law again.

One of the court's main concerns was that the 2024 regulations went too far in adding rules about behaviors that didn't meet the required amount of harm to constitute sexual harassment, according to their definition, like failing to call a student by their preferred pronouns. The court also listed concerns over the 2024 regulation's definition of "sex" to include "gender identity" and how the regulations could conflict with free speech.

Because of this, schools have been under the 2020 regulations since January 2025.

Recently, the Department of Education formally announced the 2024 regulations are no longer in effect. This clarifies that schools will continue to apply Title IX the same way they have since January 2025.

The difference between the 2020 and 2024 regulations

One difference between the 2020 and 2024 regulations is Title IX's geographical jurisdiction.

The 2024 regulations expanded Title IX's geographical jurisdiction to apply more often to off-campus locations. The regulations claimed this could prevent students from engaging in sexual harassment off-campus in order to avoid discipline from their school. It also better reflected where sexual harassment occurs, according to the regulations.

The 2020 regulations defined Title IX's jurisdiction to sexual harassment or assault that occurs within the school's education program or activity. This narrowed the circumstances in which an incident could be investigated under Title IX, but it still allowed schools to investigate such cases under their own sexual harassment policy.

Another key difference is whether the sexual harassment has to be severe and pervasive or just severe or pervasive.

Schuster said this distinction is important because the 2024 version only required the harassment to be either severe or pervasive to fall under Title IX. She explained that under this standard, a single severe sexually harassing comment could fall under the 2024 Title IX regulations, while repeated mild sexually harassing comments could also qualify if they occurred daily.

Under the 2020 version, the sexual harassment must be both severe and pervasive to count, according to Schuster.

Reporting a sexual assault is also different under the 2020 and 2024 regulations.

"(The 2020 version) took a lot higher standard to start to hold someone accountable because it wasn't enough just to make a report. It had to be a formal complaint," Schuster said. Reports must be formal, written and signed in order to mandate a Title IX investigation, unlike the 2024 version, which was open to any kind of notice.

Title IX at BYU

Taylor said survivors of sexual assault often feel a lot of shame, which can make it difficult to talk about or report. Online discourse over the announcement has centered largely around the fear of whether or not survivors will be able to get justice.

However, the Title IX Office at BYU provides comprehensive help for both Title IX and non-Title IX cases.

"The first priority of Title IX is to restore their access," David Rasmussen, Title IX coordinator at BYU, said. "Maybe somebody hasn't been going to class or hasn't been going to work because of what happened. We want to help restore their access to that education program or activity and make sure they can be as successful as they want to."

If a case does not fall under the 2020 regulations for Title IX jurisdiction, BYU's Sexual Harassment Policy comes in. Rasmussen said students can make a report to the Title IX Office regardless of whether they know if the case is under the Title IX jurisdiction or the Sexual Harassment Policy. The process is the same, according to Rasmussen, until the end, where a Title IX case is required to end in a live hearing with cross-examination, and a non-Title IX case can end in a panel of decision-makers.

Rasmussen said the person who experienced the harassment can choose how they would like the Title IX Office to respond, whether they would prefer an official investigation, an informational report or an alternative resolution.

The Title IX Office can give amnesty from the Honor Code Office for facts related to the circumstances of a report.

The Title IX website and BYU's Sexual Assault Survivor Services website are resources students can look into for more information on reporting and recovering from sexual harassment.