The 2024 Title IX Rule Comes Out of the CFR

The Education Department has filed a final rule that takes the 2024 Title IX law rule out of the Code of Federal Regulations and puts the earlier text back. It was published on September 29, 2026 at 91 FR 61308, and took effect the same day. For most Title IX offices it changes nothing about how a case is run — but it is worth understanding why, and worth reading the four things the Department decided not to restore.

What was filed

The rule is called Recodification of Title IX Rules. It comes from the Office for Civil Rights, amends 34 CFR part 106, and carries RIN 1870-AA26. Its stated purpose is narrow: repeal the Department’s 2024 Title IX rule and restore the regulatory text as it appeared on April 28, 2024, the day before the 2024 rule was published.

There was no proposed rule and no comment period. The Department issued it directly as a final rule, relying on the Administrative Procedure Act exemption for rules about federal financial assistance, and, in the alternative, on a good cause finding that notice and comment would be “unnecessary and contrary to the public interest.” It also took effect immediately rather than after the usual delay.

Why the CFR was out of step

Worth saying plainly what is being repealed, since the rule itself does not. The 2024 rule rewrote the procedure — how a school takes notice of a complaint, how it investigates, who decides, and the range of conduct the regulations reach. Those procedural changes, and the reach of them, are what the litigation turned on.

The 2024 rule never had a quiet life. Eight courts preliminarily enjoined it between June 13 and August 22, 2024. Two courts then vacated it in full, in final appealable orders issued on January 9 and February 19, 2025. On January 31, 2025, the Department announced it would enforce the pre-2024 regulations, and a Dear Colleague Letter dated February 4, 2025 confirmed it would enforce Title IX under the 2020 rule.

What never happened was the paperwork. The CFR kept printing the vacated 2024 text. As the Department puts it, that created “ambiguity and a source of potential confusion for recipients, courts, parents and students, and the public writ-large.” Anyone who looked up their Title IX obligations by reading the CFR found language that no longer governed anything.

The Department is explicit that this is not a policy change

The rule goes out of its way to say what it is not. It “does not reopen debate on the 2020 Rule or the 2024 Rule,” does not weigh the two against each other, and does not defend or criticise either. Vacatur already restored the earlier text as a matter of law; this rule updates the published code to match.

The practical translation for a coordinator: if your grievance process has followed the 2020 framework since early 2025, nothing about your process changed on September 29. What changes is that the regulation you cite in a notice, a dismissal or a determination letter will now read the way you have been applying it.

Four things it does not restore

The rule replaces each section the 2024 rule touched with the April 28, 2024 text, with four deliberate exceptions. These are the details worth knowing.

• The cross-examination sentence is gone for good. The 2020 rule contained a sentence at 34 CFR 106.45(b)(6)(i) barring a decision-maker from relying on the statement of any party or witness who did not submit to cross-examination at a live hearing. A federal court vacated that sentence in Victim Rights Law Center v. Cardona in 2021. The Department does not bring it back, and notes the vacatur is final.
• The self-evaluation and its records are not reimposed. Former 34 CFR 106.3(c) required recipients to review their policies within one year of the rule taking effect, and 106.3(d) required them to keep the resulting records for three years. Both deadlines passed decades ago. The Department declines to reinstate them, saying it does not want to create “the impression that recipients are all required to go through the review and record-keeping process a second time.”
• The athletics adjustment period stays expired. Former 34 CFR 106.41(d) gave recipients one or three years to comply with the rest of the athletics section. That window closed more than forty years ago, and restoring the text could suggest a new one had opened. The Department calls that “absolutely not” its intent.
• Appendix A is not coming back. It was removed earlier this year by a separate rule, and the Department notes it held no substantive content — only a cross-reference to an appendix that itself no longer exists.

Everything else is a straight restoration. The sections being replaced are 106.1, 106.2, 106.6, 106.8, 106.10, 106.11, 106.15 through 106.18, 106.21, 106.30, 106.31, 106.40, 106.44 through 106.48, 106.51, 106.57, 106.60, 106.71 and 106.81.

What it means for your records

Two things follow for anyone responsible for case files.

The first is about citations. Determination letters, dismissal notices and supportive-measure records often quote or reference a regulatory subsection. Files opened between April 2024 and early 2025 may cite 2024-rule provisions that were enjoined or vacated in their jurisdiction. That is not a defect in the record — it reflects what was understood at the time — but a reader coming to those files later will need the history to make sense of them. A short note in the file explaining which framework applied, and when, costs nothing now and saves an explanation later.

The second is about the retention question the rule quietly leaves alone. By declining to reinstate the old three-year record requirement at 106.3(d), the Department removes a federal hook some institutions had cited for keeping self-evaluation records. It says nothing about the records you keep for individual Title IX cases, which are governed by 106.45, state law and your own retention schedule. If your retention policy traces back to 106.3(d), this is the moment to check what it actually rests on.

This is the second rule change in three years to land on Title IX offices mid-case. The lesson from the last one has not changed: a case record built around what happened, who was told, what was decided and when will survive a change in the regulation on top of it, as we covered in When the Rules Change, Your Title IX Records Shouldn’t.

Key takeaways

• The rule repeals the 2024 Title IX rule in the CFR and restores the text as it stood on April 28, 2024. It was published September 29, 2026 at 91 FR 61308 and took effect that day.
• It is a paperwork correction, not a policy change. The 2024 rule was vacated in early 2025 and has not been enforced since.
• Four provisions are not restored: the vacated cross-examination sentence, the 106.3(c)–(d) self-evaluation and records requirement, the expired 106.41(d) athletics adjustment period, and Appendix A.
• No proposed rule and no comment period — the Department invoked an APA exemption and a good cause finding.
• Check whether any retention policy of yours cites 106.3(d), and consider noting in older files which framework applied at the time.

Sources

1. Recodification of Title IX Rules, 34 CFR part 106, RIN 1870-AA26 (final rule, 91 FR 61308, September 29, 2026)
2. Office for Civil Rights, Dear Colleague Letter on Title IX enforcement (Feb. 4, 2025)
3. U.S. Department of Education, “Department of Education to Enforce 2020 Title IX Rule” (Jan. 31, 2025)

How Casearoo handles this: case management for any department.