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The United States Department of Education will no longer collect data measuring harassment, bullying, or assaults of transgender or nonbinary students.

The Office of Management and Budget approved the rule change in July. The move comes as the executive branch agency has taken over many aspects of the Education Department, with the Trump administration seeking to consolidate and eventually cut the department entirely. In addition to eliminating data collection on bullying and harassment of trans and nonbinary kids, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) Data Collection unit will no longer track whether schools have policies protecting those students.

The rule change also eliminates trans or nonbinary persons from a list of protected people in its definition of rape. Whereas the previous policy stated that all students, “regardless of sex, or sexual orientation, or gender identity,” could be victims, the new policy reads, “All students, regardless of sex, or sexual orientation, can be victims of rape” — omitting gender identity as a protected status.

The changes are being made, in part, to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order from 2020, which removed federal consideration of trans and nonbinary protections and designated that only two sexes would be recognized (male and female) by the administration.

Seth Galanter, a senior fellow for the Edley Center on Law & Democracy and a former deputy assistant secretary at the Department under the Obama and Biden administrations, criticized the changes.

In Scathing Ruling, Judge Blocks DOJ from Obtaining Medical Data for Trans Youth

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