Student Union
- By Aline Barros
Court Decision Postponed on Federal Rule Targeting Foreign Students
A federal judge postponed taking action Friday in a lawsuit filed by two universities against the U.S. government, while the state of California filed a separate lawsuit over federal guidance that foreign students who take online-only classes will lose their immigration status.
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs announced she would wait until next week to decide whether to issue a temporary order to stop the directive, announced by U.S. immigration officials Monday, that requires international students to attend classes on campus in person.
American colleges and universities are grappling with how to hold classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many opting to conduct some or all courses online for the upcoming semester.
Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology challenged the federal rule, saying it would throw U.S. higher education into chaos, forcing schools to scramble to arrange in-person classes while ignoring risks to public health.
In a short hearing held by videoconference, Burroughs said she would wait to review the government's opposition to a temporary order, to be filed Monday. A full hearing on the matter is expected Tuesday.
Some foreign students left the U.S. earlier in the year as the pandemic shuttered campuses nationwide. Others have been sheltering in the U.S. and taking online courses to continue their studies.
International students contributed $45 billion to the U.S. economy in 2018, according to the Institute of International Education.
A second lawsuit
Thursday, the state of California also sued the Trump administration over the foreign student directive. California's state universities and community colleges argue the rule harms international students as well as colleges and universities that will lose revenue.
About 40,000 international undergraduate and graduate students were enrolled at the nine campuses of the University of California, according to 2019 enrollment figures. In addition, according to the website edsource, the California Community Colleges chancellor estimated that the rule could affect 20,000 students, and California State University estimated 11,300 students at its campuses would be affected.
Meanwhile, the University of Southern California announced it would offer in-person classes at no additional cost to international students to help them maintain their visa status.
Student stopped at Belarus airport
The impact of the Trump administration's guidance is already being felt. During a Thursday hearing, an attorney representing Harvard, Bill Lee, said a university student from Belarus was not allowed to enter the U.S. because of the new guideline.
"Quite honestly, your honor, we are getting flooded with inquiries and requests because of the policies being enforced at the borders as we speak," Lee said in court.
ICE's directive
The recent guidance, released Monday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, halts an exemption, prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, that allowed students on some visas to take classes online while schools were shuttered.
Now, if a college or university offers only online courses, foreign students enrolled there must transfer to another institution with in-person classes or leave the United States.
Ken Cuccinelli, a top official at the Department of Homeland Security, said Tuesday on CNN that the policy was created to "encourage schools to reopen."
"We're providing and looking at providing so much flexibility to allow those openings to happen in a variety of ways. That doesn't mean there aren't still basic protections that are required," he said.
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NAIA all but bans its transgender college athletes from women's sports
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, the governing body for mostly small colleges, announced a policy Monday that all but bans transgender athletes from competing in women's sports.
The NAIA's Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes at schools across the country, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.
According to the transgender participation policy, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed to participate in women's sports.
A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in interscholastic competition.
"With the exception of competitive cheer and competitive dance, the NAIA created separate categories for male and female participants," the NAIA said. "Each NAIA sport includes some combination of strength, speed and stamina, providing competitive advantages for male student-athletes. As a result, the NAIA policy for transgender student-athletes applies to all sports except for competitive cheer and competitive dance, which are open to all students."
There is no known number of transgender athletes at the high school and college levels, though it is believed to be small. The topic has become a hot-button issue for those for and against transgender athletes competing on girls' and women's sports teams.
At least 24 states have laws barring transgender women and girls from competing in certain women's or girls sports competitions. Last month, more than a dozen current and former college athletes filed a federal lawsuit against the NCAA, accusing the sports governing body for more than 500,000 athletes of violating their rights by allowing transgender women to compete in women's sports.
The Biden administration originally planned to release a new federal Title IX rule — the law forbids discrimination based on sex in education — addressing both campus sexual assault and transgender athletes. But earlier this year, the department decided to split them into separate rules, and the athletics rule now remains in limbo even as the sexual assault policy moves forward.
Hours after the NAIA announcement, the NCAA released a statement: "College sports are the premier stage for women's sports in America and the NCAA will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women's sports and ensure fair competition for all student-athletes in all NCAA championships."
The NCAA has had a policy for transgender athlete participation in place since 2010, which called for one year of testosterone suppression treatment and documented testosterone levels submitted before championship competitions. In 2022, the NCAA revised its policies on transgender athlete participation in an attempt to align with national sport governing bodies, following the lead of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
The three-phase implementation of the policy included a continuation of the 2010 policy, requiring transgender women to be on hormone replacement therapy for at least one year, plus the submission of a hormone-level test before the start of both the regular season and championship events.
The third phase adds national and international sport governing body standards to the NCAA's policy and is scheduled to be implemented for the 2024-25 school year on August 1.
There are some 15.3 million public high school students in the United States and a 2019 study by the CDC estimated 1.8% of them — about 275,000 — are transgender. The number of athletes within that group is much smaller; a 2017 survey by Human Rights Campaign suggested fewer than 15% of all transgender boys and transgender girls play sports.
The number of NAIA transgender athletes would be far smaller.
