The federal office responsible for investigating sexual harassment and assault complaints at American colleges did not resolve a single major case in 2025. Not one. The Trump administration spent that year cutting the office to the bone, transferring its lawyers to the Justice Department, and redirecting what enforcement muscle remained toward policing transgender athletes.
What Title IX Is Actually Supposed to Do
Title IX is a 1972 federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools. In practice, it is the primary mechanism that gives college students a path to justice when they are sexually assaulted on campus and prosecutors decide not to bring criminal charges. As NPR reports, the law requires universities to investigate, hold hearings, and take protective action, things like different housing arrangements, no-contact orders, and suspension or expulsion of accused students.
The key distinction, as Beth Gellman-Beer, who spent nearly two decades at the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, explains to NPR, is that Title IX is not about putting someone in jail. It is about determining whether a student who allegedly committed sexual assault should be allowed to remain on campus. The burden of proof is lower than in a criminal case by design, because the goal is campus safety, not incarceration.
When a university fails to uphold that process, students have historically been able to file a complaint with the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, which would then open an investigation. That backstop, the federal check on university inaction, is what the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling.
Cornell, Seven Alleged Attackers, and the System Actually Working
The NPR report zeroes in on a lawsuit filed by a former Cornell University student identified as Jane Doe. According to the lawsuit, she was drugged and raped by seven students at a fraternity house in October 2024. Campus police investigated and referred the case to the local district attorney. No criminal charges resulted.
But the Title IX process did move forward. NPR reports that at least 12 hearings were held before a faculty and staff panel in May 2025. Cornell told NPR the investigation took several months and resulted in expulsions, suspensions, and the permanent closure of the fraternity chapter involved. Cornell's Title IX process, whatever its flaws, apparently functioned here.
For a lot of students, though, it does not. A 2025 Cornell survey found that more than one in three undergraduate women reported experiencing sexual assault at some point during their time at the school. That is up from 23 percent in 2023. Lawyer Carolin Guentert, who has represented Title IX victims, told NPR something that should stop every parent of a college student cold: 'This happens everywhere, all the time.'
The Regulatory Whiplash Making Everything Worse
Title IX has been yanked back and forth like a political football for years now, and the whiplash is doing real damage to the students it is supposed to protect. In 2020, the first Trump administration tightened the rules, raising the burden of proof and requiring live hearings with cross-examination of accusers. Critics said that chilled reporting. Survivors were already reluctant to come forward; making them face cross-examination made it worse.
The Biden administration moved to loosen those requirements and extend Title IX protections to LGBTQ students. This month, according to NPR, the Trump administration reversed all of that, scrapping the Biden-era expansions and reinstating the 2020 rules. Schools are now scrambling, again, to rewrite their policies, again.
Guentert told NPR that Title IX coordinators often lack proper training and are not trauma-informed, and that the constant regulatory churn compounds the problem. 'Schools' policies have to keep up,' she said, and when they cannot, investigators end up 'out of step with their own schools' policies.' In other words, even the people running these processes are confused about what the rules are. The students trying to use them are on their own.
The Office That Was Supposed to Catch All of This Is Gone
Here is the part that should make you genuinely angry. When a university fails a student under Title IX, the federal fallback is the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. Or it was. NPR reports that in its broader campaign to eliminate the Education Department entirely, the Trump administration has drastically cut that office, moving many of its lawyers to the Justice Department.
The administration has also made clear where its Title IX priorities actually lie, and it is not rape cases. Enforcement has been redirected toward gender identity and transgender athletic policies. A report from Sen. Bernie Sanders found that in all of 2025, the Office for Civil Rights did not reach a single resolution agreement for a major discrimination case involving sexual harassment or sexual violence on campus. Zero. The office exists. It is just not doing that anymore.
To be plain about what this means: if a university investigates a sexual assault complaint badly, or ignores it entirely, the federal mechanism that existed to hold that school accountable has been effectively shut down. Students are left with whatever their campus chooses to do, and courts.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe this administration cares about campus safety because it reinstated cross-examination requirements for sexual assault hearings. That is the pitch. Putting accusers through live cross-examination is framed as due process, as fairness. Maybe there is a version of that argument worth taking seriously. But it becomes a lot harder to take seriously when the same administration has simultaneously zeroed out the enforcement office that exists to make sure schools run any process at all, let alone a fair one. What good is a procedural requirement with no cop to enforce it?
The Sanders report finding zero resolution agreements for sexual harassment or assault cases in all of 2025 is not a policy disagreement. It is an abandonment. And the redirection toward transgender athletic policy is not a coincidence. This administration figured out that 'Title IX' sounds like a thing they can use against trans kids, and they are using it. The part of Title IX that protects women from being raped at fraternity parties is, evidently, less interesting to them.
More than one in three undergraduate women at Cornell reported being sexually assaulted during their time there. Cornell is not an outlier; Guentert told NPR point-blank that this happens everywhere. The federal law designed to address exactly that problem is still on the books. The office designed to enforce it has been gutted. And the administration doing the gutting wants credit for being tough on sex-based discrimination. The audacity of that position is genuinely breathtaking.
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