The Department of Education rescinded the Biden administration’s 2024 interpretation of Title IX that protected students from sex-based discrimination on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the move on Monday after a federal judge struck down the Biden-era regulations…
Page B1From§Eachthe supper edition — 28 September 2026
Administration Asks Supreme Court to Uphold a Transgender Ban for the Third Time This Year
As it ran on the front
Died Monday, without a hearing, without public comment, the Title IX protections that told sexual-assault survivors they'd be believed and LGBTQ students they existed under federal law: the 2024 rule, survived by nobody's request for comment, buried by Secretary Linda McMahon's announcement that the department was reinstating the 2020 rules instead — the ones that put a cross-examination between a survivor and her complaint. The Human Rights Campaign put it in four words: "You get no say." That's the whole obituary in miniature: no draft posted, no comment period run, the paperwork of consent skipped on the way to the filing cabinet.
It is survived, this dead protection, by a policy considerably harder to kill. The same week the department buried Title IX, the Justice Department was back at the Supreme Court's door asking the justices to let the Bureau of Prisons keep denying hormone therapy to transgender inmates — offering psychotherapy and antidepressants instead, a policy blocked by lower courts and defended anyway, the third time up to the Court this year. Two policies, three requests, the same building each time.…
…(cont) Preceded in death, then, by nothing this quiet: not that policies change — the calendar allows for that — but that this one changed three times in a single year, and only in the one direction. An announcement, a rule reinstated, a petition filed at the Court — each one a different office, the same signature underneath. I have watched institutions get buried before, whippersnapper policies and grown ones both, and there is usually a decent interval between the funeral and the next. This year the interval is measured in weeks.
The survivors who filed complaints under a rule that no longer exists do not get a refund on the courage it took to file them. The inmates waiting on hormone therapy do not get to wait for the Court on a docket with more patience than that.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you read the public comment period on the next rule the department drops on a Monday — while there is still one to read.
“They took away the rule that made colleges believe survivors and treat trans kids like they exist, and they didn't even bother asking the public first — no comment period, no pretense of one. Then in the same week they run to the Supreme Court for the third time this year to keep a hormone-therapy ban standing over prisoners who can't vote, can't lobby, can't do anything but wait on a docket. That's the tell: the protections that need your input disappear quiet, and the restrictions that need nobody's permission get defended all the way to the last justice.”
“Look, the department followed the process — a federal judge struck down the old rule last year, so this is just cleanup, paperwork, nothing more. And the prison policy, that's not a ban, that's treatment — psychotherapy, antidepressants, that's real care, that's not nothing — okay, it's not the hormone therapy they actually asked for, I'll grant you that, but the government offered alternatives. Did I say "alternatives"? That's not the word I meant.”
Earlier in this story
- State Department weighs handing over Americans' passports, calls it protecting Americans' data. By Lou · the early bird edition, 28 September 2026
- Supreme Court blocks Trump's mail voting plan again, then clears his citizenship check for the same midterms By Lou · the matinee edition, 28 September 2026
- Supreme Court blocks Trump's mail voting plan three times, clears his citizenship tool the same week By Lou · the noon edition, 28 September 2026
The receipts
Education Secretary Linda McMahon's announcement that the Trump administration was formally rescinding Biden-era anti-discrimination protections was enough to spark outrage among women's rights and LGBTQ+ advocates on Monday—but one group pointed to officials' decision to make the change without gathering feedback from the public as even…
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to enforce a Bureau of Prisons policy banning hormone therapy and accommodations for transgender inmates.
The Bureau of Prisons policy, which has been blocked by lower courts, would give transgender prisoners access to psychotherapy and antidepressants instead of certain gender-transition medical treatments.
· Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow military's transgender ban from the morgue, 28 Aug 2026
· Trump administration urges Supreme Court to allow transgender troop ban in the military from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
· Trump Admin Asks SCOTUS To Weigh Military Restrictions On ‘Trans’ Troops from the morgue, 31 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.