Title IX Rights for Pregnant and Parenting Students

When people think of Title IX, they usually think of sexual misconduct cases or athletics. But the same law also protects a group of students who are often overlooked: those who are pregnant or parenting. Title IX prohibits schools that receive federal funding from discriminating against students based on pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions, and it requires those schools to take specific steps to keep pregnant and parenting students in their education.

If you are a student who is pregnant or has recently given birth, or you are supporting one, here is what the law actually requires of your school.

What Title IX Protects

Title IX's protection for pregnant and parenting students is broad. It covers pregnancy itself, childbirth, termination of pregnancy, recovery from any of these, and related medical conditions. A covered school cannot treat a student worse because of any of these circumstances, and it cannot exclude a pregnant student from any class, program, extracurricular activity, or educational opportunity.

Crucially, participation must be voluntary. A school cannot require a pregnant student to move into a separate program, switch to online-only instruction, or step back from activities unless the student chooses that option. Any separate arrangement must be genuinely comparable to what other students receive, and it has to be the student's decision, not the school's mandate.

Excused Absences and Medical Leave

One of the most important and most frequently violated protections involves absences. A school must excuse a student's absences due to pregnancy or childbirth for as long as the student's doctor says the absence is medically necessary. When the student returns, the school must allow them to resume the same academic and extracurricular status they held before the leave began.

This often means a school must give a pregnant or recently postpartum student the chance to make up missed work rather than penalizing them. A professor who refuses to allow make-up exams, or an attendance policy applied rigidly against a medically excused student, can amount to a Title IX violation.

Reasonable Accommodations

Schools are also required to make reasonable modifications so that pregnant students can keep participating. Depending on the situation, these can include things like a larger desk, more frequent restroom breaks, permission to keep water or snacks during class, a temporary move to ground-floor classrooms, or extensions on assignments when pregnancy-related medical needs require it. The specifics vary, but the principle is constant: the school must adjust where it reasonably can so the student is not pushed out of their education.

Lactation is part of this too. Schools generally must provide a clean, private space, other than a restroom, where a student can pump or nurse, along with reasonable time to do so.

Where Schools Get It Wrong

Common violations look like this:

• Telling a pregnant student she must drop a class, leave a program, or switch to remote learning
• Refusing to excuse medically necessary absences or to allow make-up work
• Counting pregnancy-related absences against attendance-based grades or scholarships
• Pressuring a student to take a leave of absence she did not request
• Excluding a pregnant student from clinical placements, labs, internships, or extracurriculars
• Failing to provide a private lactation space

These problems frequently come not from open hostility but from a professor or administrator who simply does not know the rules. That does not make them lawful, and a student does not have to accept them.

How This Differs From Workplace Pregnancy Rights

It is easy to confuse the educational protections under Title IX with the workplace protections that apply to pregnant employees. They are separate systems. An employee facing pregnancy discrimination at work relies on statutes like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, which is the focus of our pregnancy discrimination practice. A student facing the same kind of treatment at a federally funded school relies on Title IX. Some people, such as a graduate teaching assistant or a nursing student in a clinical rotation, can occupy both roles at once, which makes it especially important to identify which protections apply to which part of their situation.

What to Do If Your School Will Not Cooperate

If your school is not honoring these obligations, a few steps protect you:

• Put your requests in writing and keep copies, including any doctor's notes
• Identify your school's Title IX Coordinator, who is responsible for compliance, and raise the issue with them directly
• Document every response, especially denials and who made them
• Know that you can file a complaint with the school and, if necessary, with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights
• Consider speaking with an attorney if the school continues to resist or if the stakes for your education are high

Because Title IX requirements have shifted with changing federal regulations in recent years, it is worth confirming the rules currently in effect for your situation. For background on the current framework, see our overview of the Title IX regulations that actually apply in 2026.

The Bottom Line

Title IX gives pregnant and parenting students real, enforceable rights: voluntary participation, excused medical absences, the chance to make up work, reasonable accommodations, and lactation space. Schools do not always honor them, sometimes out of ignorance rather than intent, but students do not have to give up their education to have a child. If your school is putting up barriers, you have options worth exploring.