The U.S. Department of Education has rescinded the Title IX guidance put in place by former President Joe Biden during the final days of his Administration.
During Biden’s final days in office, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) issued guidance related to Title IX, stating that revenue-sharing payments from schools to athletes must be proportionately distributed to men and women.
On Wednesday, under the new Trump Administration, the Department of Education announced Biden’s “11th hour guidance” had been rescinded.
“The NIL guidance, rammed through by the Biden Administration in its final days, is overly burdensome, profoundly unfair, and it goes well beyond what agency guidance is intended to achieve,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.
Trainor said that the Biden Administration claimed that NIL agreements between schools and student-athletes were akin to financial aid and therefore should be proportionately distributed to female and male student-athletes under Title IX.
However, he said that Title IX “says nothing about how revenue-generating athletics programs should allocate compensation among student-athletes.”
“The claim that Title IX forces schools and colleges to distribute student-athlete revenues proportionately based on gender equity considerations is sweeping and would require clear legal authority to support it. That does not exist. Accordingly, the Biden NIL guidance is rescinded.”
With the new policy clarifying that Title IX does not mandate how revenue should be allocated, it opens the door for schools to prioritize revenue-generating sports like football and men’s basketball for compensation.
U.S. Representative Lori Trahan, a former Division I volleyball player at Georgetown, objected to the Trump Administration rescinding the OCR fact sheet.
College sports may change, but schools’ legal obligations under Title IX doesn’t.
If Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress won’t defend women’s sports, the courts will have to. https://t.co/MAZgkonPLl
— Lori Trahan (@RepLoriTrahan) February 12, 2025
“College sports may change, but schools’ legal obligations under Title IX doesn’t,” Trahan said in a statement. “If Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress won’t defend women’s sports, the courts will have to.”
As outlined by Sportico‘s Michael McCann, the counterview is that NIL rights are tied to an athlete’s unique identity, and intellectual property law protects that right by preventing companies from using someone’s identity for profit without their permission. NIL deals depend on an athlete’s marketability, meaning the big stars get lucrative deals and others get nothing. Title IX usually covers standardized benefits for student-athletes like tuition, housing and travel, but applying it to more individualized aspects of an athletes’ identity “could prove beyond its intended scope.”
A solution that would make everyone happy would just be Football, Men’s and Women’s basketball and women’s gymnastics getting the lion’s share of revenue sharing and other sports just simply operating as they always have.
Maybe that’s unrealistic, but the idea of “revenue sharing” for any sports that don’t generate revenue seems a little bit ridiculous.
This is why I keep saying that the only thing that will solve the problem is congressional intervention.
The law doesn’t contemplate which employees make money and which ones don’t, for obvious reasons. You don’t get to pay your HR & payroll folks below minimum wage because business development brings in all the revenue.
There will always be a lawyer who will be able to push the “all athletes” case in front of the judges to grow the class and increase the fees. You will never be able to completely work that out of the system. So until there’s a carevout in the law, it’s always going to be “all athletes”.
I’d love to hear the opinion of a coach or participant who is outspoken about protecting women’s sports by barring transgender athletes but somehow is ok with this, too
Your ignorance is astounding.
Guess the Congresswoman is upset she wasn’t invited to the White House for the signing last week …
“If Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress won’t defend women’s sports, the courts will have to.”
She does realize the equal part goes both ways, toss out football and most of the NCAA stars are women not men
“Them that’s got shall get. Them that’s not shall lose” ~ Billie Holiday
This issue should be hashed out in court and not through executive fiat.
Women’s sports have never been promoted or supported to the same extent as men’s sports so how could revenue be a fair litmus? Olympic sports have never been supported to the same extent either.
NIL will never be as simple as athletes getting paid and this is a case that needs to be explored, dissected and litigated.
Sports that bring in 10% of the revenue should get 10% of the profit share, sports that bring in 80% of a schools revenue should get 80% of the profit share (like football). Even as a swimmer, I knew I shouldn’t be getting any revenue payment bc my sport loses money for the school.
Should someone who does the same job as me but doesn’t do anything or provide any benefit to my company be paid the same as me?
There are non revenue positions and departments in every single major company in the world. The question is whether those provide value? Well, in a pure business perspective they absolutely do! And from a sports perspective having a well rounded athletics department that supports all sports is a major positive
If you are a socialist, the answer is yes. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, Karl Marx
Just waiting to see if Riley Gaines will ride shotgun with her daddy on this executive order.
Let’s gather all the little girls in the Oval Office again and take another PR picture
Don’t really have a dog in the fight, but without bringing politics into the mix, explain to me how this is incorrect? NIL is an economic consideration, meaning the more revenue a student-athlete brings from their performance/popularity/value to an institution the more $$$ they should receive. To share this revenue equally based upon Title IX really defeats the purpose of NIL. Bringing NIL under the umbrella of “student aid” seems to me to be a bit of a stretch.
I’m confused over this. Is this for revenue sharing or NIL deals? The article uses both terms, but revenue sharing and NIL are very different. It doesn’t make any sense to me to apply Tittle IX to individually negotiated NIL deals. But if this is about schools sharing revenue with student-athletes, it at least makes some sense to require schools to share with all athletes.
I think “revenue-sharing” is essentially “NIL deals” between athletes and the school.
Edit: I read the initial article and it seemed like Biden’s guidance was more that schools must publicize/offer NIL assistance to both genders equally and revenue-share equally. Which Trump says they don’t have to do anymore.
You are correct. From SwimSwam’s article in January
“The DOE released a fact sheet providing the first formal information on NIL and revenue sharing, confirming these will be subject to Title IX standards. This sheet clarified that money paid to athletes under ‘NIL’ umbrellas need to be considered the same as athletic scholarships in regard to gender-equity, regardless of if the money is coming directly from the school.”
NIL has absolutely no legal or logical reason to fall under student aid and thus Title lX considerations.
It really comes down to what is being considered. Whether it’s money funneled through the university or private businesses.
The risk is that it creates a gigantic loophole that could be expanded to basically every part of a university and render Title IX moot.