By Jackie Gharapour Wernz & Holly McIntush

The long awaited proposed Title IX regulation from the Biden administration’s U.S. Department of Education was released today, on the 50^th anniversary of Title IX. You can find the proposed rule here. As expected, the proposed rule includes provisions that, if they become law, would drastically change the process schools, colleges, and universities use to address Title IX sexual harassment reports. The current process is from the Trump administration’s Title IX rule, which has been in effect for less than two years. Among other things, the proposed rule would grant explicit legal protections to LGBTQI+ students, replace the “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” definition for a hostile environment with a lower “severe or pervasive” standard, and remove the requirement that a formal complaint be signed or filed to initiate the complaint process.