Washington, DC - April 19, 2024 - Today, the U.S. Department of Education finalized a range of critical updates to its regulations interpreting and enforcing Title IX, restoring and reinforcing vital civil rights protections for all students to access school spaces and programs free from sex discrimination.

Washington, DC - April 8, 2024 - Today, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) announced its decision to categorically ban transgender women from women's sports.

Washington, DC - March 15, 2024 - Today, a group of over 80 organizations, including the National Women's Law Center (NWLC), National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), GLSEN, and Human Rights Campaign, submitted a joint letter to President Biden urging him to swiftly finalize comprehensive Title IX regulations to ensure the safety and protection of student survivors, pregnant and parenting students, and LGBTQI+ students, including transgender, nonbinary, and intersex student athletes.

The following is a statement by Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center (NWLC): "We are thrilled that civil rights champion Nicole Berner has been confirmed to serve on the Fourth Circuit, becoming the first openly LGBTQ person to do so. She is also only the third openly LGBTQ woman to serve on the federal appellate bench. Berner is an outstanding lawyer with expertise in civil, labor, and reproductive rights who is deeply committed to ensuring equal justice for everyone. Throughout her illustrious career, she has worked tirelessly to advance and protect the rights of women, girls, people of color, and LGBTQ people, demonstrating a profound understanding of how the law affects all of our lives.

BOSTON - Plaintiffs in Boston Alliance of LGBTQ+ Youth (BAGLY) et al v. HHS, a lawsuit challenging the Trump-Pence Administration's "Rollback Rule" undermining health care nondiscrimination protections contained in Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), filed a motion for summary judgment calling on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts to repeal the discriminatory rule.

The following is a statement from Shiwali Patel, Director of Justice for Students Survivors and Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center: "We're deeply disappointed in the Biden Administration's decision to postpone the final Title IX rule until March 2024, almost a year later than first promised. These ongoing delays are unacceptable, leaving students stuck under outdated and harmful Trump-era rules. Survivors, LGBTQI+ students, and pregnant and parenting students are being harmed every day by the absence of these protections and the lack of a new Title IX final rule. We refuse to tolerate broken promises any longer. The Biden Administration must take immediate action to strengthen Title IX and meet the urgency this moment calls for."

CAMBRIDGE, MA - April 25, 2023 - The Biden Administration has issued a proposed rule that affirms that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972-commonly referred to as Title IX-secures the rights of transgender, non-binary, and intersex students to play school sports free from blanket discriminatory exclusions. Following the Administration's proposal, the Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic and the National Women's Law Center released a toolkit with background information on Title IX and information on how members of the public can support the positive aspects of this new rule while continuing to push for explicit protection from discrimination for all transgender, non-binary, and intersex student athletes.

(New York, January 19, 2022) - Today, Lambda Legal and the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) submitted a friend-of-the-court brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth District to affirm a U.S. District Court ruling blocking implementation of Arkansas's trans health care ban. The ban was passed over Gov. Asa Hutchinson's veto in April 2021. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit - Brandt v. Rutledge - in May to block implementation of the plan, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas ruled in the ACLU's favor shortly before the law was to take effect. Arkansas has since appealed that ruling to the Eighth Circuit.

(Washington, D.C. - December 16, 2020) As expiration deadlines near for the emergency extended unemployment benefits under the CARES Act (on December 26) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's temporary halt on many evictions (on December 31), a new National Women's Law Center analysis finds grave racial and gender disparities in who is facing housing, food, and income shortages--with those households with children facing the greatest risk.

(Washington, D.C. - October 18, 2020 ) In a 2018 ruling during her term on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Amy Coney Barrett reversed a lawsuit filed by Shonda Martin, a 19-year-old pregnant woman held at a Milwaukee County correctional facility who alleged she was raped by a prison guard. According to the opinion of Judge Barrett's court, the County could not be held liable because the guard was not acting in his official duties during the assault.

WASHINGTON - May 26, 2017 -Today, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Employment Law Project, the National Women's Law Center and 70 national organizations wrote to Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to urge the Trump administration to abandon its proposal to eliminate the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), which is currently part of the Department of Labor, and transfer its functions to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).  The letter was also sent to congressional leadership.

(Washington, D.C. - May 9, 2017)  The National Women's Law Center (NWLC) filed amicus briefs in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that request full panel review of two cases and argue that sexual orientation is protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, NWLC said today. The briefs were joined by 14 other organizations.

Janaury 16, 2017 - The following is a statement by Marcia D. Greenberger, Co-President of the National Women's Law Center (NLWC): "If Betsy DeVos is confirmed as Secretary of Education, America's students will suffer-especially our girls and young women. DeVos's record stands in stark contrast to the Department of Education's crucial function of protecting equal access to high-quality education for all students. Her efforts to oppose commonsense oversight of charter schools and dramatically expand vouchers, not only damages public schools but also threatens quality education for students nationwide. Her actions in Michigan demonstrate how much is at stake. Last summer, DeVos aggressively lobbied state legislators, spending over $1.45 million to derail provisions to increase oversight of Detroit charter schools, even including one that would 'stop failing charter operators from creating new schools.' Her efforts to shield charter schools from oversight remove accountability, including for basic civil rights principles of equality of opportunity. Detroit's charter school system has been recognized as one of the greatest school reform failures in the country.

"No window dressing can camouflage the simple fact that the confirmation of Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General would seriously threaten the rights of women and their families. Senator Session's record on women's legal rights and protections is dismal. And it is those very rights that the Attorney General must enforce. He has described Roe v. Wade as one of the worst, 'colossally erroneous Supreme Court decisions of all time.' And his repeated opposition to legislation providing women access to reproductive care, including abortion and contraception, underscores his hostility to women's right to this basic health care. He has consistently opposed laws protecting women's right to equal pay, including the bipartisan Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He has repeatedly taken positions hostile to the rights of women subjected to violence and sexual assault-including voting against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and voting to block a bill that would have increased protections from sexual assault for military members. When a tape in which Donald Trump described sexually assaulting and harassing women was released in October 2016, Sessions said that he wasn't even sure that grabbing a woman by her genitals is sexual assault. He has opposed bedrock civil rights protections such as the Voting Rights Act and even called the NAACP and the ACLU 'un-American' and 'Communist-inspired.' Sessions has been a leading voice in Congress against immigration reform and favored drastically reducing legal immigration. He has regularly opposed antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals."

(Washington, D.C. - January 31, 2017) The National Women's Law Center (NWLC) and law firm Mayer Brown LLP submitted an amicus brief late afternoon yesterday in Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District that challenges the school district's decision to exclude 16-year-old transgender student Ash Whitaker from using boys' bathrooms at George Nelson Tremper High School. School administrators and teachers steadily monitored Whitaker to make sure he used the girls' restrooms and insisted on using only female pronouns and his birth name when addressing him.