Cal State sues Trump administration over Title IX funding threats

Dive Brief:

The California State University system sued the Trump administration Friday in response to its threats to pull San José State University’s federal funding over the public institution’s transgender student-athlete policies.
In January, the U.S. Department of Education said San José State violated Title IX civil rights law when it allowed a transgender woman to play on its volleyball team from 2022 to 2024. The agency said the public university must agree to its sweeping settlement terms or risk losing its federal funding.
Cal State rebuked the agency’s findings and proposed Title IX settlement on Friday, calling the efforts an example of “lawless overreach.” The Education Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Dive Insight:

San José State President Cynthia Teniente-Matson said in a Friday statement that the university takes Title IX seriously and doesn’t undertake the lawsuit lightly. Title IX bars sex-based discrimination at federally funded educational institutions. 

But the Education Department’s findings “aren’t grounded in the facts or the law,” and the university “cannot and will not agree to the terms” of the proposed settlement, she said.

“All of our students, faculty and staff deserve to be treated fairly, with the rights and protections granted under federal and state law, including privacy rights, and to live and learn free from discrimination,” Teniente-Matson said.

Among the Education Department’s proposed settlement terms, San José State would be required to adopt the Trump administration’s definitions of sex and gender, apologize to the cisgender women student-athletes the administration says had been hurt by the university’s policies, and revoke any titles or awards won by transgender college athletes.

The University of Pennsylvania agreed to similar terms in July, after the Trump administration suspended $175 million in federal funding to the Ivy League institution and asserted that it had violated Title IX because of its transgender student-athlete policies.

One of President Donald Trump’s first acts back in office was signing an executive order directing the federal government to only recognize two sexes — male and female — and to not acknowledge gender identity, positions that scientific and medical communities have pushed back against.

The following month, he signed another executive order barring transgender women from playing on women’s sports teams. The president threatened to pull federal funding from educational institutions that didn’t comply. 

The next day, the Education Department launched Title IX investigations into San José State, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, a K-12 organization, over their athletics participation policies for transgender students. 

All of the agency’s findings against San José State stem from events prior to when Trump retook office in January 2025. 

Cal State argued in court filings that executive orders from Trump’s second term do not retroactively change the federal guidance it was operating under from 2022 to 2024. At the time, the Education Department under the Biden administration said discriminating against gay and transgender people violated Title IX. 

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction includes California, upheld an injunction against an Idaho law that sought to bar transgender girls and women from competing on teams aligning with their gender identity. The state appealed, and that case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Cal State’s lawsuit, it wrote that whether Trump’s executive orders are lawful “remains unsettled, but that is irrelevant here.”

“The president does not have the authority to override judicial decisions interpreting the Constitution or federal statutes — much less to go back in time and change the rules that applied before he took office,” it said.

The lawsuit comes less than two months after the Education Department said San José State was in violation of Title IX.

“We will not relent until SJSU is held to account for these abuses and commits to upholding Title IX to protect future athletes from the same indignities,” Kimberly Richey, the agency’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a January statement.

A majority of San José State students receive federal financial aid, and that funding often covers the cost of attendance of those from the lowest-income backgrounds, according to Cal State’s lawsuit. 

“If SJSU does not agree to all those extortionate terms, it will lose federal funding that is essential to SJSU’s ability to operate,” it said. “That is no choice at all.”

Cal State also said that San José State was complying with the NCAA transgender player policies during the period in question. The college sports organization updated its policies the day after Trump’s executive order to only allow students assigned female at birth to compete in women’s athletics.