Biden official announces delay in rewrite of Trump's Title IX policies amid broad opposition

The Department of Education confirmed Secretary Miguel Cardona's disclosure last week that its proposed revisions to the Trump administration's Title IX rules on gender identity and campus sexual misconduct would be delayed a month from the Biden administration's own self-imposed April deadline.

"We are working on the new rules and we're expecting next month that they are released, in May," Cardona told a House Appropriations Committee hearing Thursday, declining to provide specifics except that the goal is to provide "equal access, protect students against discrimination and protect students against sexual violence."

"This regulatory process raises important and complex issues that require careful consideration as well as the urgent need for action,” a department spokesperson explained to Politico. The delay will "ensure that the Department is able to devote thoughtful and appropriate attention to these issues.”

The department was still sticking to the April timeline early last month, even though its meetings with outside groups stretched through mid-May and Cardona said he'd share more information "in the coming month - or months."

A former Trump education lawyer who discussed the issue on a "Just the News Not Noise" special credited the delay to opponents of gender ideology. This is "proof positive that if you rattle your sabers loud enough even the bureaucrats on the mountain have to listen," the Heritage Foundation's Sarah Parshall Perry tweeted. "We won’t accept gender identity as a stand in for biological #womanhood."

Asked for evidence for her claim, Perry told Just the News in an email: "There’s no 'evidence' because the administration would never let on we’ve had an impact."

She cited pushback by congressional Republicans led by Missouri Rep. Vicky Hartzler, the discharge petition to move the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act by Florida Rep. Greg Steube to the House floor, pressure from cross-ideological women's groups and opponents' meetings with the Office of Management and Budget.

"I have good reason to believe they vastly underestimated the pushback on this," Perry wrote.

The Department of Education did not immediately answer requests to respond to Perry's explanation for the delay.