Solicitor says federal court rulings return Title IX procedures to 2020 rules; district to reassess processes

Mark Fitzgerald, the district solicitor, told the Saucon Valley School District board Thursday that a recent federal ruling has made the Biden administration's 2024 Title IX regulations unavailable nationwide.

Fitzgerald said the order in a case commonly described as State of Tennessee v. Cardona has “ordered a vacatur” of the 2024 rules and that, as a result, “we're back now to the regulations that were in place last year, the 2020 regulations.”

Why it matters: The change affects how the district investigates complaints and the procedural protections available to people accused of wrongdoing. Fitzgerald told the board the older rules are more procedural and place greater burdens on districts to provide expanded investigatory and appeal procedures.

Fitzgerald said districts will need more staff and outside investigators to implement the 2020 approach and that some elements—such as how appeal reviews are staffed—will be more resource-intensive. “Under the old regs, there was an extra level of what I'll call due process,” he said, adding that the earlier rules made complaint processing “more onerous to file complaints, and more protections for the accused.”

Fitzgerald told board members the level-of-proof question would again be a local agency decision under the 2020 rules and noted the district had adopted a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard in 2020. He said that, in his view, the change is largely procedural in Pennsylvania because the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act imposes additional state-level obligations.

Board members asked for plain-language clarification. Fitzgerald summarized practical examples—student-to-student and student-to-staff allegations and quid-pro-quo supervisory complaints—and noted the district’s obligations remain substantial even if the specific federal rules change. “There's a lot of moving parts right now that the district is working through,” he said.

Fitzgerald also briefed the board on litigation dynamics: cases in Kansas and Kentucky are in different procedural postures and he said he expects further change once a new federal administration and Justice Department take positions in pending lawsuits.

The solicitor’s remarks were informational; the board did not take any formal vote on policy changes at the meeting. Fitzgerald urged continued monitoring and said the administration will need to return to the board with policy and operational changes as they are finalized.