For some time, Title IX compliance has come with an odd disconnect. Institutions have been following the 2020 Title IX regulations, but the official text in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) still showed the 2024 rule that courts had struck down. Anyone who checked a campus policy against the published regulations, whether a student, a parent, opposing counsel, or a new staff member, could easily have come away confused. That disconnect has now been resolved.
On September 29, 2026, the U.S. Department of Education published a final rule, “Recodification of Title IX Rules,” 91 Fed. Reg. 61308 (Sept. 29, 2026). The rule formally repeals the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX rule from the CFR and restores the regulatory text that existed before the 2024 rulemaking, with a few small changes discussed below. It took effect immediately upon publication.
Why a Rule That Was Vacated Needed Rescinding
As many REGucation readers will remember, the 2024 rule never got far. The 2024 Title IX rule officially took effect on August 1, 2024, but it was immediately blocked by court orders in many states. Two courts then vacated it in full in final judgments: Tennessee v. Cardona, No. 2:24-cv-00072 (E.D. Ky. Jan. 9, 2025), and Carroll Independent School District v. U.S. Department of Education, No. 4:24-cv-00461 (N.D. Tex. Feb. 19, 2025). The appeals in both cases were dismissed in May 2026, so those vacaturs are now final.
The Code of Federal Regulations, however, never caught up. The CFR continued to publish Title IX at 34 CFR Part 106 as modified by the vacated 2024 Rule, which created “ambiguity and a source of potential confusion” for recipients, courts, and the public. 91 Fed. Reg. 61310-11. The Department’s view was that vacatur already restored the prior text as a matter of law, and that this rule simply updates the CFR to reflect that.
The Four Discrete Changes
The rule did not only reinstate the 2020 Title IX regulation. The Department made four “minor changes” to that text:
- The vacated cross-examination exclusion sentence is gone. The 2020 rule’s § 106.45(b)(6)(i) barred decision-makers from relying on any statement of a party or witness who did not submit to cross-examination at a live hearing. A federal court vacated that sentence in Victim Rights Law Center v. Cardona, 552 F. Supp. 3d 104 (D. Mass. 2021), and the Department stopped enforcing it in August 2021. The Department did not replace the vacated language with a new rule governing how decision-makers should treat a party’s nonparticipation. It reasoned that the two clauses depended on each other and that rewriting the sentence risked changing its meaning.
- Appendix A to Part 106 is not reinstated. A separate July 2026 final rule had already removed Appendix A, which was only a cross-reference to Appendix B of 34 C.F.R. Part 100, and that appendix no longer exists.
- The athletics “adjustment period” in former § 106.41(d) is not reinstated. That provision gave recipients one or three years to comply with § 106.41, and the period expired decades ago. The Department said bringing it back could create “the impression that recipients will now have another year or three to come into compliance,” which “is absolutely not the Department’s intent.”
- The self-evaluation and recordkeeping provisions in former § 106.3(c)–(d) are not reinstated. These required a policy review “within one year of the effective date of this part” and required records of that review to be kept for three years. Both deadlines passed roughly five decades ago, since the original regulations took effect in 1975, and the Department did not want to suggest that institutions must repeat the process.
What This Means on Campus: Probably Not Much
In practical terms, this rule should have little day-to-day effect on institutions. Schools have been operating under the 2020 rule since at least early 2025 (and in certain states, without interruption). The Department itself describes the rule as one that “effects no change of current substantive law” and does not expect it to impose costs on anyone. It also says the rule “does not subject recipients to new obligations.”
The main benefit is clarity. Your policies, your training, and the CFR should now all say the same thing.
Need a Refresher on the 2020 Rule?
If it has been a while since you worked through the details of the 2020 regulations, we can help. In 2020, Thompson Coburn published a six-part Title IX training video series that remains available on YouTube, free of charge: Title IX Training Series (2020).
Note that the series was published before a federal court vacated the cross-examination exclusion in § 106.45(b)(6)(i) in 2021, and that exclusion is omitted from the recodified text. Viewers should review the training against the regulations as currently applied.
A Reminder About Publishing Your Training Materials
This is a good moment to check your website. The 2020 rule requires recipients to keep, for seven years, “all materials used to train Title IX Coordinators, investigators, decision-makers, and any person who facilitates an informal resolution process.” Recipients must also make those materials “publicly available on its website,” or, if they have no website, make them available for public inspection on request. The requirement appears at 34 C.F.R. § 106.45(b)(10)(i)(D).
If your training slides have been updated since 2024, make sure the versions posted online match what you are actually using under the 2020 framework.
If you have questions about what the recodification means for your institution’s policies, procedures, or training, please reach out to Scott Goldschmidt, Stephanie Fredman, or Leah Northener.
