Cuny graduate school rolls back protections for pregnant students

A graduate school at the City University of New York (Cuny), a university system with 25 colleges spread across New York City, has rolled back rules meant to protect the rights of pregnant students, the school said on Tuesday in an email obtained by the Guardian.

The change came as a consequence of a recent Trump administration move that limits schools’ liability in sexual misconduct cases, according to the email.

Under the new rules at Cuny’s Graduate Center, employees are no longer required to provide pregnant students with the contact info for the coordinator tasked with ensuring that the school abides by Title IX, a 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in the thousands of educational programs that receive funding from the US government. Employees are also not required to inform pregnant students of the rights available to them under Title IX.

“Nevertheless, CUNY encourages employees to assist students seeking supportive measures in these instances,” said the email, sent by the office of the president of the Graduate Center, which enrolls more than 3,000 doctoral and master’s degree students.

A spokesperson for Cuny did not immediately provide a comment on the changes, but confirmed that the new policies are taking effect across the entirety of the university system.

In addition to the changes for pregnant students, the email added, “fewer employees will have a duty to inform their Title IX coordinator when they learn of conduct that may constitute sexual misconduct”.

Late last week, the Trump administration announced in a so-called “Dear Colleague” letter that it would no longer enforce Biden-era regulations around Title IX, which were finalized in 2024. Instead, the administration’s Department of Education will revert to a set of 2020 regulations, which were issued under the first Trump administration and which anti-sexual assault advocates heavily criticized for curtailing the scope of Title IX and weakening protections for people who come forward with sexual misconduct allegations.

Under those regulations, schools must hold live hearings in which accusers and the accused can be cross-examined, are no longer required to address sexual misconduct that occurred on study abroad programs and can take longer to finish a Title IX investigation. The definition of sexual harassment under Title IX is also far narrower.

Trump’s move effectively affirms a January court order that recently struck down the entirety of the Biden administration’s 2024 changes to Title IX, which rewrote many of the 2020 regulations. A number of red states had sued over the changes, which also interpreted Title IX to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. Those expanded protections, US district judge Danny C Reeves wrote, “fatally taint the entire rule”.

The Biden-era regulations explicitly required that schools set up a lactation room and made it easier for pregnant students to take leaves of absence. The erasure of these protections, advocates say, would seem to be at odds with Republican claims about the importance of raising families.

“The fact that the Trump administration is rolling back these protections just shows that they don’t actually care about pregnant people’s lives, even though they claim to be pro-life,” said Emma Grasso Levine, senior manager of Title IX policy and programs at the organization Advocates for Youth. “If they actually cared about the rights of women and folks who can get pregnant, they would be cementing protections like these.”

Josia Klein, counsel in the education and workplace justice sector of the National Women’s Law Center, said that nothing prevents Cuny – or any other school – from leaving the 2024 Title IX requirements in place.

“Even without the 2024 rule in effect, Title IX is a floor, not a ceiling, for civil rights,” Klein said. “We believe that schools can and should still be following the best practices that are outlined in the 2024 rule prohibiting discrimination and expanding reasonable accommodations for pregnant and parenting students.”

Neither Klein nor Grasso Levine was aware of other schools that have put out policies like Cuny. But at least one other school system has taken a different approach. Last week, the California department of education’s state superintendent issued a letter affirming that California law is unaffected by federal changes and will continue to “provide safeguards against discrimination and harassment based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation”.

In another “Dear Colleague” letter issued on Tuesday by the Trump administration, Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, pointed to Trump’s recent executive order on “gender ideology” as a justification for enforcing the 2020 rules. That order claimed that there are only two genders and ordered the federal government to purge itself of initiatives and language that say otherwise.

“It is safe to say that the mass of executive orders and guidance and threats to eliminate the Department of Education all contribute to schools being unclear about what they’re required to do for students,” Klein said. “Students are the ones who suffer.”