Clover Garden School appears to be relying on an April 2024 rewrite of Title IX of the federal Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits sex-based discrimination by any school that receives federal funding, based on a copy of Clover Garden’s “Title IX Discrimination and Harassment Polices for Students and Staff Members.”
Clover Garden’s policy mirrors a revision to Title IX under President Joe Biden – a sweeping expansion that extended additional federal protections against discrimination and harassment based on gender identity, sexual orientation, and “pregnancy or related conditions.”
However, the charter school’s board of directors approved its Title IX policy in July 2025, seven months after the administration of President Donald Trump reversed the 2024 expansion under Biden.
Multiple states (excluding North Carolina) sued to block the 2024 expansion from taking effect; and a federal district court judge struck it down in January 2025.
Clover Garden’s 13-page Title IX policy prohibits discrimination and harassment based on gender, sex, or LGBTQ identification, to include “gender-based harassment, which is unwelcome conduct based on a student’s sex” and/or any conduct based on a student’s “failure to conform to sex stereotypes.”
Potential disciplinary actions for students who are deemed to have violated Clover Garden’s Title IX policy include: verbal warning or written warnings; requiring a student to make restitution and participate in “training” or counseling; and ordering the student to have no contact with the victim, according to the charter school’s policy. Employees who are found guilty of violating the policy are subject to “sanctions” that range from a written warning to termination.
In part, Clover Garden’s Title IX policy states: “The school strives to model an inclusive environment and prohibits discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender or sex, including sexual orientation and LGBTQ+ identification. The School will not tolerate any form of unlawful discrimination or harassment in any of its educational or employment activities or programs based on such protected classifications.”
By comparison, the Alamance-Burlington school board was one of the first in the state in voting 6-1 in August 2024 to adopt a revised policy that reflected the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX (then-school board member Ryan Bowden voted against). The ABSS board subsequently voted 7-0 earlier this year to rescind the 2024 expansion of Title IX, reverting to a policy that had been in place since 2020.
The 2024 Title IX changes were intended to provide “greater clarity” regarding schools’ “obligations not to discriminate based on sex stereotypes, sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity; and schools’ obligations to provide an educational environment free from discrimination on the basis of sex,” according to the U.S. Department of Education.
ABSS school board attorney Adam Mitchell of the Tharrington Smith law firm in Raleigh has repeatedly said that the 2024 revision to Title IX had no effect on an existing requirement to allow transgender students to use school bathrooms corresponding with their preferred gender, as established by the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board. Nor did it have any effect on protections for female student-athletes under North Carolina’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act and the state’s Parents’ Bill of Rights.
In vacating the 2024 expansion of Title IX, Danny Reeves, chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, concluded that the U.S. Department of Education under Biden had overstepped its authority in redefining sexual discrimination.
Since its inception in 1972, Title IX had always been intended to guarantee female students the same educational and athletic opportunities as male students in K-12 schools, colleges, and universities, Reeves wrote.
In his 15-page ruling in State of Tennessee v. Miguel Cardona (then-U.S. Secretary of Education), Reeves also pointed to potential conflicts between the Biden-era expansion of Title IX and First Amendment guarantees. “Put simply, the First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees,” Reeves wrote.
