New Mexico higher education still navigating Trump's Title IX rules

New Mexico’s higher education institutions are adjusting to the Trump administration’s announcement that it will begin enforcing its controversial Title IX rules.

The University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College said Tuesday that they have implemented or will continue to follow, respectively, President Donald Trump’s rules. These include narrowing the definition of sexual harassment; returning to live hearings with cross-examination during campus sexual assault disciplinary proceedings; and enforcing protections based on biological sex.

Higher education institutions had already been returning to Title IX guidelines put in place in the final weeks of Trump’s first term in 2020 after a Kentucky federal judge on Jan. 9 effectively scrapped then-President Joe Biden’s Title IX regulations, which had gone into effect Aug. 1. That judge ruled Biden’s regulations — which expanded protections for LGBTQ+ students — were unlawful and could not be enforced nationwide. New Mexico was not part of the lawsuit, but numerous state institutions were impacted.

The move is part of a flurry of Trump executive orders in the first weeks of his new administration targeting transgender Americans. He’s also denied them identification documents such as passports — only allowing sex at birth to be included, imposed a nationwide restriction on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, launched investigations into schools with gender neutral bathrooms, criminalized teacher support for transgender students and required the Federal Bureau of Prisons to move the estimated 1,500 transgender women in custody to be housed with men.

UNM Chief Compliance Officer Francie Cordova said her office has fielded inquiries from students, parents, faculty and staff about the rule changes — not just on the transgender changes, but also for those on sexual harassment.

“They’re concerned about being unsafe or the fact that they won’t be protected,” Cordova said.

William Nutt, Title IX coordinator and executive director of the Office of Institutional Equity at New Mexico State University, said his office has not had “loads” of complaints but said it’s normal for people to be concerned “in a highly charged political environment.”

The rules fall under Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools. Trump has said he wants to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, which provides oversight of Title IX. Trump has nominated Linda McMahon, his administrator of the Small Business Administration from 2017 to 2019, as education secretary. McMahon’s nomination hearing before a Senate committee is scheduled for Feb. 13.

Dear Colleague Letter

In a Feb. 4 Dear Colleague letter to higher education institutions and K-12 schools, Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights with the U.S. Department of Education, said the agency would enforce Trump-era rules, which were once championed by Betsy DeVos, the secretary of Education during the president’s first term.

Trainor’s letter said the administration would review all pending Title IX cases from the previous year, Trainor said. Some of these cases are at UNM, New Mexico State University and Albuquerque Public Schools, according to an online list of pending cases generated by the department’s website.

Additionally, Title IX laws must enforce Trump’s recent executive order explicitly stating that sex means the “immutable biological classification as either male or female,” Trainor said.

Enforcing Biden-era rules

Biden’s rules, which went into effect Aug. 1, included broadening protections to include students’ sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy and parenting status; extending jurisdiction of higher education sexual assault cases to off-campus and international incidents; removing the mandate for hearings; and allowing students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

NMSU prepared to implement Biden-era rules but never did, Nutt said.

Cordova said UNM amended its Title IX regulations to reflect Biden’s rules, hosting town halls about them before changing language on the university’s website.

But UNM also kept Trump’s rules, citing a Biden provision that said the 2020 rules should be used for all cases prior to Aug. 1, Cordova said.

“It’s kind of been table tennis, more than even football, I think, with Title IX, going back and forth between administrations,” she said.

Enforcing Trump’s rules

Trainor’s recent letter bore little impact on UNM since the university was already using Trump’s rules, Cordova said.

She said UNM continues to conduct live hearings in its Title IX investigations, which happens to be one of the most controversial elements of the Trump rules. In this setting, the accused students can cross-examine their accusers through an adviser, according to The Associated Press. The Biden rule made live hearings optional, though some courts had previously upheld an accused student’s right to cross-examination, the AP said.

Cordova said UNM has built-in safeguards in which university officials, as opposed to the parties involved, question one another.

“It’s still traumatic, but I think our hearing office has been very intentional about ... doing things that are the least traumatizing for either party,” Cordova said.

Her message to the UNM campus community in light of the rule changes is that, “We will work our hardest to make sure people always feel safe and comfortable on campus.”