By James Sutherland on SwimSwam
The U.S. Department of Education has rescinded the Title IX guidance put in place by former President Joe Biden during the final days of his Administration.
During Biden’s final days in office, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance related to Title IX, stating that revenue-sharing payments from schools to athletes must be proportionately distributed to men and women.
On Wednesday, under the new Trump Administration, the Department of Education announced Biden’s “11th hour guidance” had been rescinded.
“The NIL guidance, rammed through by the Biden Administration in its final days, is overly burdensome, profoundly unfair, and it goes well beyond what agency guidance is intended to achieve,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.
Trainor said that the Biden Administration claimed that NIL agreements between schools and student-athletes were akin to financial aid and therefore should be proportionately distributed to female and male student-athletes under Title IX.
However, he said that Title IX “says nothing about how revenue-generating athletics programs should allocate compensation among student-athletes.”
“The claim that Title IX forces schools and colleges to distribute student-athlete revenues proportionately based on gender equity considerations is sweeping and would require clear legal authority to support it. That does not exist. Accordingly, the Biden NIL guidance is rescinded.”
With the new policy clarifying that Title IX does not mandate how revenue should be allocated, it opens the door for schools to prioritize revenue-generating sports like football and men’s basketball for compensation.
U.S. Representative Lori Trahan, a former Division I volleyball player at Georgetown, objected to the Trump Administration rescinding the OCR fact sheet.
College sports may change, but schools’ legal obligations under Title IX doesn’t.
If Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress won’t defend women’s sports, the courts will have to. https://t.co/MAZgkonPLl
— Lori Trahan (@RepLoriTrahan) February 12, 2025
“College sports may change, but schools’ legal obligations under Title IX doesn’t,” Trahan said in a statement. “If Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress won’t defend women’s sports, the courts will have to.”
As outlined by Sportico‘s Michael McCann, the counterview is that NIL rights are tied to an athlete’s unique identity, and intellectual property law protects that right by preventing companies from using someone’s identity for profit without their permission. NIL deals depend on an athlete’s marketability, meaning the big stars get lucrative deals and others get nothing. Title IX usually covers standardized benefits for student-athletes like tuition, housing and travel, but applying it to more individualized aspects of an athletes’ identity “could prove beyond its intended scope.”
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Trump Administration Rescinds Biden’s Title IX NIL Guidance