Image: Collegiate Swimmer in a swim lane with text that reads: ED UPenn Title IX Resolution.
The Department of Education opened an investigation into the University of Pennsylvania in February 2025 relating to the participation of a transgender woman on the school’s women’s swim team. In April, the Department determined that the University had violated Title IX “by denying women equal opportunities by permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”
On July 1, 2025 the Department announced that the University had signed a resolution agreement relating to that investigation. OCR’s Recent Resolution Search website was recently updated, and the resolution letter and agreement with Penn are now available to the public for review.
The press release includes information about the steps the University must take to comply with the agreement, including amending the school’s swimming records as applicable to remove or reassign titles or recognition “misappropriated by male athletes allowed to compete in female categories,” issuing letters of apology to impacted female swimmers, rescinding University guidance that is contrary to Title IX, and issuing a statement about Title IX compliance that includes the Universities adoption of “biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ pursuant to Title IX” and recent Executive Orders.
What can schools take away from this resolution? The Trump administration continues to prioritize the enforcement of its interpretation of Title IX and of sex and gender, which is reflected in the recent Executive Order that uses the University of Pennsylvania NCAA Division 1 team as a headline-making example. Thus far, the primary focus has been on situations that have made headlines, as was the case at the University of Pennsylvania. Although women’s collegiate swimming is not widely followed, the team swims at the highest collegiate level, NCAA Division I. Other recent agency activities, including in California, Maine, New York, and Minnesota, reflect the ongoing efforts of this administration to eliminate protections for students based on gender identity and to reject that gender identity is a protected category under federal civil rights laws.
Recall that the 2024 Title IX Regulations, now vacated, reflected an opposite policy position. Those regulations rejected the gender binary or limitations around “sex assigned at birth,” and ensured that students had the right to participate in programs or activities consistent with their gender identity, including access to facilities. A year later, these same concepts are subject to attack and make institutions vulnerable to investigation and negative findings by the federal government. Still, many state civil rights laws provide protections against discrimination or harassment on the basis of gender identity in the workplace or places of public accommodation, and as of this writing no federal laws forbid such protections at the state level. But the implementation of those protections in school or on campus may ultimately run afoul of federal expectations, particularly when relating to participation in sex separated athletics or access to facilities such as locker rooms or bathrooms.
Grand River Solutions professionals continue to be available to support you in navigating this changing landscape. Contact us for support on policy-writing and implementation, training, investigations, or other needs relating to Title IX, the Clery Act, and other civil rights or campus safety laws.