Transgenderism/Transexualism

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has formally found that San Jose State University violated Title IX in how it handled a transgender volleyball player and the complaints of female teammates, and has given the school 10 days to comply with a corrective agreement or face "imminent enforcement action." OCR concluded SJSU denied women equal athletic opportunities by allowing a male athlete to compete on the women’s volleyball team, affecting competition, safety, scholarships and playing time, and then retaliated against female athletes who objected, including by subjecting one complainant to a Title IX case for allegedly "misgendering" the trans player while not probing a reported plan to spike her in the face. The finding stems from a 2024 season in which seven teams forfeited matches against SJSU and from lawsuits by former co‑captain Brooke Slusser and ex‑assistant coach Melissa Batie‑Smoose, who say they were forced to share intimate spaces with the trans athlete and punished after raising concerns. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey called the university’s conduct "unacceptable" and said ED "will not relent" until SJSU is held to account and commits to upholding Title IX protections for female athletes. The determination escalates a high‑profile clash over transgender participation in women’s college sports into a concrete federal enforcement action that could guide future disputes across the NCAA.

The Supreme Court heard challenges to Idaho’s and West Virginia’s laws that bar transgender women and girls from competing in female sports, with justices probing whether the statutes discriminate based on transgender status or on sex. President Trump afterward attacked justices he thought sympathetic to the plaintiffs—saying any justice who would allow “men to be able to play in women’s sports” should “lose a lot of credibility”—while in‑court observers noted moments such as Justice Clarence Thomas appearing disengaged and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressing the states’ solicitors general on disparate treatment.

An Eighth Circuit panel is hearing a Title IX challenge over a Minnesota softball player's participation after a transgender pitcher prompted a lawsuit that has returned to court and drawn renewed national attention. The proceedings come as the same appeals court recently paused lower‑court restrictions on tactics used by federal agents in an ICE‑related case, highlighting concurrent high‑profile federal disputes tied to Minnesota.

A retired U.S. Space Force colonel pushed out under President Trump’s transgender service ban and a three‑star Navy admiral removed in a leadership purge have each launched Democratic campaigns for the U.S. House, explicitly tying their runs to their ousters. Bree Fram, a 23‑year officer whose career ended in December, announced a bid in Northern Virginia and says she will run in whatever district covers her Reston home after court‑ordered redistricting; under current lines that’s VA‑11, held by Democratic Rep. James Walkinshaw. Fram’s launch video says Trump 'fired me, not because of my performance but because of who I am,' framing her candidacy as a defense of constitutional oaths and government that doesn’t target its own people. In South Carolina’s 1st District, former Navy Reserve chief and helicopter pilot Nancy Lacore, removed last August in a purge overseen by War Secretary Pete Hegseth, entered the crowded race to replace GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, saying she was taken out 'without cause' but is 'not done serving.' Their bids highlight how Trump’s military personnel decisions, including the transgender ban and senior-officer shake‑ups, are now feeding directly into the 2026 midterm landscape as former officers seek to challenge his agenda from Congress.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Bayer’s appeal in the Roundup litigation, centered on whether EPA‑approved labels and federal pesticide law preempt state‑law failure‑to‑warn claims over glyphosate‑based herbicides. The justices’ decision could determine whether thousands of pending state court cancer suits against Bayer can proceed or must be blocked.

The Associated Press reports that after President Donald Trump’s administration slashed staff in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) last year, federal sexual‑violence investigations at schools and universities have dropped from dozens per year to fewer than 10 nationwide, while the office faces a backlog of more than 25,000 discrimination complaints. OCR now has roughly half as many lawyers to investigate alleged violations based on race, sex and disability, leaving many survivors who filed Title IX sexual‑assault complaints with no contact from the agency since 2024 and forcing them toward private lawsuits or abandonment of their cases. At the same time, Trump officials have opened nearly 50 Title IX investigations targeting schools that make accommodations for transgender students and athletes, and an Education Department spokesperson defends the shift as restoring “commonsense safeguards” by rolling back Biden‑era LGBTQ+ protections. Title IX practitioners tell AP that, given the staffing collapse and the new enforcement priorities, they have largely stopped filing sexual‑violence complaints with OCR, describing it as a “void” where schools effectively face no federal accountability for mishandling assault cases. The story underscores how a little‑noticed civil‑rights office, once a key venue for student victims and accused students alike, is being hollowed out and repurposed in ways that could reshape campus responses to sexual misconduct and gender identity nationwide.

After the Supreme Court heard arguments in cases on protecting women’s sports, the Department of Education opened 18 Title IX investigations, including one into the California Community College Athletic Association (3C2A), which the Education Department and the Justice Department’s Title IX Special Investigations Team are probing over a policy that allows a transgender female or non‑binary student‑athlete who has completed at least one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment to compete on women’s teams. A formal complaint alleges that the policy discriminated against at least three female athletes by allowing a male athlete to play on a women’s volleyball team and access women’s locker facilities during the 2024 and 2025 seasons and that their complaints were ignored; Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey called the policy an erasure of women’s rights and vowed the Special Investigations Team will pursue the case.

CBS News has quietly updated its internal style guidelines to instruct reporters to use the phrase “biological sex at birth” — without quotation marks — when covering transgender issues, according to a memo from senior standards and practices director Tom Burke obtained by The Wrap. The change was issued ahead of this week’s U.S. Supreme Court hearings on challenges to Idaho and West Virginia laws that restrict school sports teams to participants’ 'biological sex at birth' and bar many transgender girls from competing on girls’ teams, and CBS web stories since Tuesday have begun using the term in describing those statutes. The move departs from the Associated Press Stylebook’s 2023 guidance, which urged journalists to avoid 'biological sex' in favor of 'sex assigned at birth' and warned that 'biological male/female' is often used by opponents of transgender rights. CBS legal correspondent Jan Crawford, who reportedly argued internally against adopting movement‑driven terminology, has used the new phrase in on‑air reporting, as the network undergoes broader editorial shifts under new editor‑in‑chief Bari Weiss. The shift underscores how major outlets are recalibrating language in a politically charged arena where word choice — whether 'biological sex at birth' or 'sex assigned at birth' — shapes how audiences perceive the legal and scientific stakes of fights over transgender participation in women’s sports.