Category: Fact Check

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s April 24 visit to Columbia University in New York City amid pro-Palestine protests surrounding the Israel-Hamas war highlighted the tension over such activism on college campuses across the country.. 

The nationwide protests, which have so far resulted in hundreds of arrests, have sparked political debate over freedom of speech and campus safety. The protests are aimed at Israel’s war in Gaza and the violence, which the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza has said has left more than 34,000 dead. The war was intended to counter Hamas, which committed widespread attacks on civilians in Israel on Oct. 7. 

For several weeks, pro-Palestinian protesters on American college and university campuses have decried civilian deaths and destruction in Gaza and have demanded that these institutions cut financial ties with Israel. Though most of the protests have been peaceful, some pro-Israel students have described some messages in campus protests as antisemitic and express concern about their physical safety.

During his visit to Columbia, Johnson, who was accompanied by a contingent of fellow Republican lawmakers, was booed and heckled as he criticized the university’s handling of the protests and urged sending in the National Guard to ensure Jewish students’ security. 

Later, during an April 24 CNN interview that aired after his Columbia visit, Johnson said he was standing up for “Jewish students who are in fear of their lives, who were cowering in their apartments right now, who are not coming to class. In fact, the administration recognized the threat was so great, they canceled classes. Now they’ve come out with this hybrid idea. ‘Well, if you’re Jewish, maybe you do want to stay at home. Maybe you’d be better off for you.’”

Johnson called this attitude “so discriminatory. It’s so wrong in every way. The responsibility of a university administrator is to keep peace on campus and ensure the safety of students — job No. 1.”

Johnson’s comment prompted an April 25 post from a new account on X from the Columbia Journalism School devoted to fact-checking statements about the Columbia protests. 

The post quoted Columbia University’s provost’s office, saying, “The university administration has not issued any directives or specific instructions to Jewish students about avoiding campus or taking classes remotely.”

When PolitiFact contacted Columbia University’s public affairs office, it pointed to two letters senior administrators sent April 22.

One letter, which university president Minouche Shafik sent early that morning, said she was “deeply saddened by what is happening on our campus” and “announced additional actions we are taking to address security concerns.” These included additional police presence and ID card checks along with added security at the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life during the Passover holiday, which began April 22.

“To deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps,” Shafik wrote, “I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday (April 22). Faculty and staff who can work remotely should do so; essential personnel should report to work according to university policy. Our preference is that students who do not live on campus will not come to campus.”

Nothing in Shafik’s letter urged Jewish students to stay away from classes, as Johnson had said. The distinction for Monday classes was between all students living off campus (who were encouraged to attend class virtually) and those living on campus (for whom virtual classes were an option).

The second letter, from Provost Angela V. Olinto and Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway, was sent the evening of April 22.

It said that for Columbia’s main campus, which has been the center of the university’s protests, most courses would become hybrid, meaning both in-person and virtual, until the end of the semester.

The letter said the hybrid approach was designed for “students who need such a learning modality” and that professors without classrooms equipped for virtual teaching should figure out a way to “hold classes remotely if there are student requests for virtual participation.”

As with the first letter, administrators neither encouraged or discouraged Jewish students from attending classes in person. The hybrid options were ethnically and religiously neutral, offered to anyone who felt uncomfortable attending class in person.

The day before the university sent its two letters, Jewish leaders on campus had expressed divergent views on whether Jewish students should remain on campus or stay away.

Johnson’s office did not answer inquiries for this article.

Our ruling

Johnson said Columbia told students, “Well, if you’re Jewish, maybe you do want to stay home.”

The university did move to a “hybrid” system for classes starting the week of April 22. However, this was offered as an option for any student discomfited by the protests, Jewish or not. The university’s letters announcing the plan neither encouraged Jewish students to go remote nor sought to dissuade them from coming to campus.

We rate the statement False.

President Joe Biden has a track-record of spinning tall tales about his past, including some that PolitiFact has rated False or Pants on Fire. 

In an April 26 interview on “The Howard Stern Show,” Biden told the talk radio star that he got arrested decades ago while protesting in defense of civil rights.

Biden said his mother encouraged him to accept Barack Obama’s invitation to be his 2008 running mate by reminding him of the stance Biden took while young when a civil rights flare-up happened in the suburban Delaware community of Lynnfield, near where Biden’s family lived at the time.

Biden said that his mother said: “‘Remember when they were desegregating Lynnfield, the neighborhood? There was a Black family moving in and there was people were down there protesting; I told you not to go down there and you went down, remember that? And you came and got arrested standing on the porch with a Black family? And they brought you back, the police?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, Mom, I remember that.’”

Biden said his mother used the moment to point out that all these years later Biden had the chance to help Obama become the first Black U.S. president.

We have heard this story before. 

In January 2022, while speaking at an Atlanta campus shared by two historically black colleges, Biden invoked civil rights battles and said, “It seems like yesterday the first time I got arrested.”

When we reached out to the White House in 2022 to clarify what arrest he was referring to, Biden’s team pointed us to excerpts from three speeches Biden has given involving a 1950s incident in Delaware in which people gathered to protest the sale of a home to a Black couple.

Police were called to the home as hundreds of people protested outside. There were a few arrests, but there is no record of Biden being arrested. We rated Biden’s statement False. 

It was not the first time Biden shared a falsehood about his arrest history. In 2020, Biden said he was arrested in South Africa in the 1970s, a statement we rated Pants on Fire. Biden was stopped at an airport when he was traveling with African American colleagues but we did not find he was arrested, and Biden later walked back that part of his story. 

Following the Stern interview, we emailed Biden spokespeople to ask if they had additional evidence to provide about Biden being arrested in Delaware in the 1950s. We did not receive a response.

Some people were arrested in protests near Biden’s childhood home

Newspaper articles confirm there were protests at two homes near where Biden was living in Delaware in 1959. The larger protest, in Collins Park, was at the home of a Black couple. The second protest, in suburban Carrcroft, was at the home of the real estate broker who had sold that couple their home. Biden’s family home in Lynnfield was about nine miles from the Collins Park home and a short walk away from the Carrcroft home, according to Google Maps. 

The News-Journal, a Wilmington newspaper, reported on Feb. 25, 1959, that seven people were arrested following the Collins Park protest — three men for disturbing the peace and four teenagers for possessing fireworks.

A March 2, 1959, Associated Press article said that a 17-year-old — described as the son of a “Harold Figgett” — was arrested for juvenile delinquency and was among four people arrested that Saturday. (Biden would have been 16 at the time.) It also mentioned seven earlier arrests. No arrests were made at the Carrcroft protest, the AP reported.

Biden has told different versions of the U.S. arrest story

Biden has not always used the term “arrest” when telling this story. He has sometimes said police brought him home. Other details vary from telling to telling, including his age at the time.

At the Economic Club of Southwest Michigan on Oct. 16, 2018, Biden recounted a story similar to what he told Stern.

“She said, ‘Joey, remember at 15 years old and that real estate agent sold a house to the Black couple in Lynnfield.’ … This was in suburban sprawl, the neighboring neighborhood. ‘I told you not to go down there because of the protests, and you went down and you got arrested because you were standing on the porch with the Black couple?’ I said, ‘Yeah, mom. I remember that.’”

At the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in North Las Vegas, Nevada, on Feb. 16, 2020, Biden again used the word “arrested.” The Washington Post Fact Checker found that Biden said his mother said, “Joey, remember when they desegregated the neighborhood called Lynnfield? You were 13, I told you not to go there, all those people were protesting, and you got arrested standing on the porch with the Black family?’”

At the University of Utah on Dec. 13, 2018, Biden said his mother said, “’Remember I told you not to go down, and the police brought you back because you were standing on the front porch with the Black couple?’”

During an Oct. 28, 2020, Zoom interview with Oprah Winfrey, he used similar language in quoting his mother, saying she said the police “brought you home,” rather than “arrested” him,  the Washington Post Fact Checker reported. 

Biden’s 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad” did not include mention of an arrest. But he did write that his mother spoke to him about Obama wanting Biden as his running mate and that his mom had “watched my lifelong fight for civil rights and racial equality.”

Our ruling

Biden told Stern that he “got arrested” while protesting against desegregation.

Biden might have been present as a teenager when there were housing discrimination protests near his Delaware home. And although Biden has been telling this story in one version or another for many years, his spokespersons have not provided evidence of an arrest, nor have we found a record of his arrest. 

We rate this statement False.

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this article.

Is the Chinese Communist Party operating “sleeper cells” on American soil? That’s what Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., said in a recent social media post. 

Stefanik, who as House Republican Conference chair is the third-highest party official under Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., decried Chinese nationals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in a March 17 post on X. 

Stefanik, who has closely aligned herself with former President Donald Trump, went on to say in the post that “we know the #CCP (the Chinese Communist Party) has set up sleeper cells in our communities. Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel as a hostile foreign regime is waging war on our way of life.”

PolitiFact reached out to Stefanik — a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees — multiple times but never received a response. However, terrorism experts said whether her assertion is accurate depends on how one defines “sleeper cell.”

We couldn’t find any publicly available, official intelligence community definition of “sleeper cell,” and we did not hear back from the CIA or the House Intelligence Committee. But the International Spy Museum, which has board members and advisers from the intelligence community, defines a “sleeper agent” as an “agent living as an ordinary citizen in a foreign country; acts only when a hostile situation develops.”

This definition mirrors the image most Americans may have from pop culture: spies or terrorists who embed themselves in another country. These so-called sleeper agents pass themselves off as ordinary citizens as they await a call from their handlers — sometimes years later — with orders to undertake a mission such as sabotage or terrorism.

Experts told PolitiFact they are unaware of any efforts by China or its ruling Communist Party that fit this Hollywood version of a sleeper cell. 

However, a looser definition of “sleeper cell” may fit a recent case of Chinese nationals who allegedly embedded themselves in Manhattan to operate an “illegal overseas police station,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a terrorism expert who founded the security and technology firm Valens Global.

According to the Justice Department’s April 2023 announcement of the charges, the effort was focused on intimidating Chinese dissidents. Like sleeper agents, the suspects worked undercover within an American community while doing the bidding of a foreign government.

But the case also presents differences with the popular conception of sleeper cells. The suspects allegedly targeted Chinese dissidents living in America, not native-born Americans; their endgame does not appear to have been a terrorist act against the U.S.; and the suspects’ anti-dissident operations may have been ongoing, rather than having to await orders for a specific mission.

The overseas police station example

The existence of these overseas police stations had been bubbling up for a few years prior to the arrests. 

In September 2022, a Spanish human rights group, Safeguard Defenders, released a report alleging the existence of at least 54 secret Chinese police stations in 21 countries. In April 2023, U.S. media reports cited seven Chinese police stations in the U.S.: two in New York City, two in California, one in Minnesota, one in Nebraska and one in Texas.

That month, the U.S. arrested “Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan, on charges related to operating a Chinese police station in lower Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood on behalf of a provincial branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security. 

The suspects were charged with “conspiring to act as agents of the (People’s Republic of China’s) government as well as obstructing justice by destroying evidence of their communications with” a Ministry of Public Security official, the Justice Department said in announcing the arrests.

“They were residents of New York City, they communicated with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, they worked to establish this unofficial police station, they operated it clandestinely at the behest of the People’s Republic of China, and it involved at least two people, which is the minimum for a ‘cell,’” said Gartenstein-Ross, the terrorism expert. “That provides a number of aspects that would establish them as a sleeper cell.”

The Chinese “police stations” don’t fit other aspects of the popularly held definition

To the extent ordinary Americans have heard of sleeper cells, however, it’s from pop culture — and such examples differ from the Chinese police stations.

The Chinese defendants don’t appear to have been terrorists, unlike the sleeper cells from the 2005-2006 Showtime miniseries “Sleeper Cell” or another Showtime series, “Homeland.”

In addition, the Chinese defendants appear to have been targeting Chinese dissidents, rather than natives of the country in which they embedded themselves. The latter was the modus operandi in the 1962 movie “The Manchurian Candidate” and the 2013-2018 FX series “The Americans.”

It also appears that the two men arrested were pursuing their activities on an ongoing basis, rather than waiting for years to undertake a specific mission, which is a key element of the Spy Museum definition.

Would China want to pursue a sleeper cell strategy against the United States?

Experts told PolitiFact that a Chinese-devised sleeper cell of the Hollywood variety seems far-fetched in today’s environment. They said Stefanik’s framing falls into the longstanding trope of a feared Chinese invasion. 

“Stefanik is basically replicating old-school ‘red scare’ stuff, trying to provoke anti-China sentiment,” said James J.F. Forest, the director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

However, they added, other tactics seem more promising from the Chinese perspective. 

“A cyber-attack involving hackers that are already present and lurking in our networks is far more likely than a Chinese-directed terrorist campaign involving ‘sleeper cells,’” Forest said. “That’s not what China does, nor is it something they’d want or need to do.”

Suzanne Ogden, a professor emerita of political science at Northwestern University, agreed.

Ogden said China has “so many thousands of students in scholars and others in this country that they don’t really need so-called sleeper cells. In the age of computers, they can find out everything they want to know without doing what sleeper cells used to do.”

Did Megyn Kelly promote an “exotic coffee method” for weight loss? No, a video that appears to show her talking about a weight loss product has been deceptively edited.

A Facebook video with the caption, “I lost over 330” shows the TV personality on “Megyn Kelly Today,” formerly a part of the “Today” show, saying, “So, if you had 22 months to transform your life, what would you do? How about lose almost two-thirds of your own body weight? That is what one teacher from Pennsylvania managed to do.”

Kelly then asks the teacher, Brittany May, to name her plan. “I’m using the coffee method,” May responds. 

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

A link in the post redirects users to a lengthy ad for a dietary supplement. We did a reverse-image search for a screenshot of the video and found that the video’s first half is authentic. Kelly did speak to May about her weight loss in a 2018 segment of “Megyn Kelly Today.” 

But the video’s second half is edited. In the original video, when Kelly asks May to name her plan, May says, “Optavia,” which is a diet program.

We rate the claim that Kelly promoted the “exotic coffee method” for weight loss on the “Megyn Kelly Today” show False. 

Social media users are claiming former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is commenting on the 2024 election by promoting merchandise opposing former President Donald Trump, who defeated her in the 2016 race.

An April 24 Facebook post showed a photo of Clinton smiling and holding a black T-shirt that said, “NOPE Not again.” The “O” in “nope” was stylized with a blond swoop of hair and a red necktie caricature of Trump’s likeness.

The post’s caption linked to a website selling the shirt.

(Screengrab from Facebook)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

It’s clear Clinton, who ran against Trump for president in 2016, is supporting President Joe Biden in the 2024 election. She’s participated in fundraisers to support Biden’s campaign and has criticized Trump for years. But this photo was altered.

A reverse-image search using Google Images and TinEye revealed the original photo came from Clinton’s X account. In 2017, she shared a photo of herself holding a black T-shirt that said “nasty woman,” referring to what Trump called Clinton during a 2016 presidential debate.

This is not the first time images of well-known people have been edited to appear as if they are posing with this “NOPE Not again” T-shirt. PolitiFact and other news outlets have fact-checked similar fake images of former President Barack Obama, former first lady Michelle Obama, pop singer Taylor Swift and actor Tom Hanks.

We rate the claim that a photo shows Clinton holding an anti-Trump T-shirt Pants on Fire!

Have all of the country’s recent job gains come from increases in part-time positions? That’s what independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a recent social media post.

On March 31 on X, Kennedy accused the federal government of distorting economic data. He added, “The much-trumpeted job growth in the last year was ENTIRELY part-time jobs.”

But Kennedy’s jobs claim does not tell the whole story. 

From February 2023 to February 2024, the most recent data available when Kennedy posted, the net increase in part-time jobs exceeded the net increase in total jobs. However, such numbers can shift wildly month to month, and experts say focusing on just one time period is cherry-picking. During Joe Biden’s presidency, part-time jobs have accounted for only about a quarter of all job gains.

Kennedy’s office did not respond to an inquiry for this article. Kennedy’s campaign of conspiracy theories was PolitiFact’s 2023 Lie of the Year.

Economists warn against focusing on data for one particular time period

The federal government uses two different surveys to measure employment. 

One queries businesses. Because it has a larger sample size, economists tend to trust it for measuring total employment.

The other survey examines households. It has a smaller sample size, meaning that the results tend to whipsaw from month to month. Therefore, economists pay less attention to the household survey when measuring overall employment.

Nevertheless, the household survey is the only one to gauge whether and why Americans are working full-time or part-time. So, for an apples-to-apples comparison, we’ll use the total employment figure from the household survey..

From February 2023 to February 2024, total U.S. employment rose by 667,000 while part-time employment rose by 921,000. So, over that specific yearlong period, part-time employment rose by more than overall employment did. (In this case, part-time jobs rose faster than jobs overall because these are net figures; in any given month, some jobs are lost while others are created.)

But economists say it’s problematic to focus on just one period.

Shifting the yearlong time span to January 2023 to January 2024 counters Kennedy’s claim. During this period, overall employment rose by 1 million while part-time employment rose by 559,000.

Kennedy also ignores the trends throughout Biden’s full tenure.

From February 2021, Biden’s first full month in office, to February 2024, overall employment rose by 10.8 million, while part-time employment rose by a little less than 2.9 million. 

That means that during Biden’s presidency, the part-time jobs increase has accounted for about one-quarter of overall job growth — not all of it.

Part-time employment doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on the economy

It’s also not clear that the increase in part-time jobs is a bad thing, for workers or the economy.

Federal data distinguishes between people working part time for economic reasons and people working part time for noneconomic reasons. Economists see increases in the first group as more worrisome, because these people want a full-time job but were forced to take a part-time job because it’s all they could find.

By contrast, many people in the second group are working part-time by choice. In many cases, these are students, parents of young children, retirees or people who want a less stressful lifestyle. 

“In my research, we consistently find that the voluntary part-time workers report higher health, happiness with work and satisfaction with work schedules than both full-time workers and people working part-time for economic reasons,” said Lonnie Golden, a Penn State University economist. So, even if a large share of new jobs are part-time, “that’s a good thing,” Golden said.

The number of new part-time jobs taken out of economic necessity is a distinct minority. Since 2021’s second half, part-time jobs for economic reasons have accounted for fewer than 1 in 6 part time jobs.

Also, part-time jobs taken for economic reasons as a percentage of all jobs haven’t been higher than 3% since mid-2021, and they are near a record low going back to the 1950s.

Our ruling

Kennedy said, “The much-trumpeted job growth in the last year was ENTIRELY part-time jobs.”

That’s the case for one specific yearlong period, from February 2023 to February 2024. However, economists warn that this metric whipsaws, and in this case, shifting the time span by just one month inverts the finding. During Biden’s presidency, overall employment has risen almost four times faster than part-time employment has.

The statement is partially accurate but ignores important information, so we rate it Half True.

Former President Donald Trump is in and out of court, and press coverage of his numerous legal cases is extensive. But one supposed headline that looks as if it appeared on CNN.com tells a fabricated story.

An April 20 Threads post shows what resembles a screenshot of an online story headlined, “Trump soils himself in court.” The post also includes what looks like CNN’s logo and digital interface.

The Threads was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Threads, and Instagram.)

A reverse-image search shows an Agence France-Presse photojournalist took the former president’s photo. The photojournalist was covering Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan in which the former president faces 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.

The same screenshot has been widely shared on X.

PolitiFact found no evidence of this report on CNN’s website and a CNN representative said the screenshot was fake.

“The image is fabricated and it’s not something CNN reported,” Emily Kuhn, senior vice president of communications, wrote to PolitFact in an email.

PolitiFact also found no evidence for the Threads claim by any other news organization covering the trial.

We rate the claim that CNN reported Trump soiled himself in court Pants on Fire!

RELATED: A fact-checker’s guide to Trump’s first criminal trial: business records, hush money and a gag order

How was President Joe Biden received when he stopped at a gas station in Pennsylvania? Fox News host Sean Hannity said the president got the cold shoulder. 

“Biden tries copying Trump by visiting a gas station in PA – instead he’s ignored by virtually everyone there,” Hannity said in an April 18 Facebook post. The post included a video of Biden at Sheetz, a gas station and convenience store chain.

The Facebook video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

Biden’s public calendar April 17 shows he gave a speech at the United Steelworkers’ headquarters in Pittsburgh. On his return to the airport, he made an unscheduled stop at a Sheetz branch in Moon Township, a Pittsburgh suburb.

Biden stopped at Sheetz with Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, where they picked up sandwiches for construction workers at the Pittsburgh International Airport. 

Videos of the gas station stop, including the one Hannity posted, do not show the president being ignored. He is seen engaging with the people inside the store.

In Hannity’s video, the president made playful faces with some children and then  walked to a counter where he met Sheetz workers. Biden chatted with the staff members, who had grouped to see him, before going behind the counter to take photos with them — all smiling.

Another video by CBS News shows the scene before the president met the children, which is not shown in Hannity’s version. In it, Biden was hugged and greeted by a man who appeared happy about the presidential encounter and was eager to take a photo with him. Gainey took the photo on the man’s phone. The clip Hannity shared starts right after that moment.  The videos do not show the president being ignored by patrons or store employees.

PolitiFact reached out to Sean Hannity for a comment but received no response.

Former president Donald Trump, days earlier, visited a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Atlanta where he ordered 30 milkshakes and some chicken for customers.

When it comes to Biden’s Sheetz stop, Hannity’s clip does not corroborate his own claim about Biden being ignored, and footage from other media outlets shows the president was welcomed by and interacted with staff and customers. 

We rate the claim that Biden was “ignored by virtually everyone” at a gas station Pants on Fire!

After the nation’s leading gender equity law, Title IX, received a long-anticipated update, the reviews are in — and they’re as mixed as a can of machine-shaken paint at Sherwin-WIlliams. 

Civil rights advocates at the Southern Poverty Law Center praised the revisions as “bolstering protections for LGBTQ+ students.” Meanwhile, one sexual violence researcher said the new regulations “abandoned” trans athletes. And Riley Gaines, an athlete who opposes transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports, said the changes “officially abolished Title IX as we knew it.”

Some states, including Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina have directed schools to ignore the policy’s directives. “We will not comply,” Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis said April 25.

Title IX, enacted in 1972, prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools. The law applies to admissions, classrooms, and protecting students against sexual harassment, but it is most well-known for how it changed athletics by requiring that women and men be provided equitable opportunities to participate.

The most recent changes came in response to President Joe Biden’s 2021 request that the Department of Education review its regulations for enforcing Title IX following Trump administration-era changes and a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that updates the understanding of “sex discrimination” to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.  

After two years and 240,000 public comments, the Education Department released its updated “Final Title IX Regulations” April 19.

The new “rule” made changes to several policies around sexual misconduct investigations, such as expanding the definition of sexual harassment. But much of the attention has been on how this will affect LGBTQ+ students. 

Despite the recent controversy over transgender athletes and Title IX’s strong association with athletics, the changes stopped short of providing guidance on transgender athletes in this set of regulations. 

Why are LGBTQ+ identities now included in “sex discrimination”?

The new regulations expand Title IX protections to LGBTQ+ students in line with the landmark 2020 Supreme Court decision, Bostock v. Clayton County. Weighing a series of cases in which employees said they were fired for being gay or transgender, the court in Bostock held that terminating people for their sexual orientation or gender identity amounts to “sex discrimination” prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

“It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. That a woman being attracted to men is tolerated, for example, when a man being attracted to men is not, he said, shows such discrimination.

Since Bostock, legal advocates and the Biden administration have argued that the same reasoning must be applied to other laws that prohibit “sex discrimination,” such as the Fair Housing Act, Immigration and Nationality Act, and Title IX.

The 2024 regulations essentially do that and now consider discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation to fall under Title IX.

What does this mean for students, especially in states with LGBTQ+ school policies?

The regulations take effect Aug. 1. 

LGBTQ+ students will now be able to turn to Title IX protections when they feel they have been discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

“You’re not going to be dismissed because you don’t have standing under the statute to bring the argument,” Ohio State University law professor Ruth Colker said.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signs a bill that prevents transgender girls and women from competing on female sports teams, March 30, 2022, in Oklahoma City. (AP)

For example, a student losing a part in a school play after a teacher finds out the student is gay could qualify as a discrimination claim investigated under Title IX under the law’s revision.

“Things that had previously been protected only by interpretive guidance are now protected by force of regulation,” said Helen Drew, a sports law professor at the University at Buffalo. 

But the question gets more complicated when considering local or state laws that are potentially discriminatory. Policies such as transgender “bathroom bans” are likely to be in the “crosshairs,” Drew said. 

Such laws will likely face lawsuits over whether they constitute sex discrimination. States may make arguments about privacy or other rationales for a given policy, Colker said, “And the question will be, does that rationale survive scrutiny under the federal statute?”

“I think we’re setting up a Supreme Court case,” Drew said.

A Department of Education spokesperson told PolitiFact that state or local law does not supersede Title IX compliance. 

Still, some state leaders issued statements advising schools to not alter any policy and suggested plans to challenge the regulations in court.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters presides meeting discuss to the U.S. Department of Education’s “Proposed Change to its Title IX Regulations on Students’ Eligibility for Athletic Teams,” April 12, 2023 (AP)

The department can theoretically revoke federal funding for schools that don’t comply with Title IX, Drew said, but the agency has never used that power. Drew likened it to having an atomic bomb: The federal agency has the power to use it, but it is “very unlikely” that they are “going to drop it,” she said.

Does this change address transgender athletes? 

Essentially, no. Although the Education Department is working separately to address the issue.

In recent years, 24 states passed laws governing the eligibility of transgender students who wish to participate in school sports. Those restrictions — often focused on limiting the eligibility of transgender girls to play on women’s teams — have sparked political debate, litigation and misinformation. 

Yet this recent Title IX revision does not decide the controversial issue of transgender girls and athletic eligibility.

The Education Department released a fact sheet alongside the new regulations that said that although generally preventing someone from participating in school activities consistent with their gender identity causes them “harm,” that principle has exceptions, including “sex-separate athletic teams.” 

The fact sheet also clarifies that the new regulations “do not include new rules governing eligibility criteria for athletic teams.”

The Education Department is working separately on a proposal, introduced in April 2023, that would ban schools from adopting “one-size-fits-all” policies that ban transgender students from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity. 

In the April 19 press release, the department clarified that the “rulemaking process is still ongoing” for the regulation regarding athletics, but that the high number of public comments (150,000) ” by law must be carefully considered.”