[co-author: Jenny Lee]*

Recent court and OCR decisions regarding transgender students and employees reflect widely varying responses to the Biden administration’s efforts to expand protections for LGBTQ+ individuals under federal law, including Title IX. In January 2021, President Biden issued an executive order applying the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County to all federal laws prohibiting sex-based discrimination, clarifying that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

Two recent decisions affirmed the Biden administration’s interpretation of federal protections. In January, a federal court in the District of Maryland ruled that a transgender teacher could move forward with her lawsuit against her former public school district for harassment and retaliation she experienced at the schools where she taught. Echoing Bostock, the court determined that the teacher’s harassment was sex-based because “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being…transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”

In June, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a resolution letter to Tamalpais School District in California determining that the district had failed to respond in a prompt and equitable manner under Title IX to a transgender student’s allegations of harassment by another student, thus causing the transgender student to “experience a hostile...

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