On August 14, 2025, the US District Court for the District of Maryland vacated the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) February 14, 2025 Dear Colleague Letter (DCL). Hunton previously provided an overview of the implications of the February 14 DCL for colleges and universities in client alerts published in February and March 2025.

In 2021, the NCAA upended its decades-long prohibition on student athletes’ ability to profit from their name, image and likeness (NIL). This means that student athletes now have, and will continue to market themselves as, a “brand,” i.e., an identity or personality that has intrinsic value, in part due to their association with school athletics. The landmark $2.8 billion proposed settlement in House vs. NCAA, currently pending approval in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, will establish guidelines for this revenue-sharing, including for NIL revenues, among schools and student athletes, further allowing students to profit off of their individual contributions to their team.

On December 10, 2025, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was rescinding portions of Title VI regulations that impose liability for “criteria or methods of administration which have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination,” also known as disparate impact liability. DOJ will now enforce Title VI only against intentional discrimination, not against neutral policies that have disproportionate effects on racial or ethnic groups. The move follows an April 23, 2025 Executive Order directing the Attorney General to review Title VI regulations and “initiate appropriate action to repeal or amend” those regulations “to the extent they contemplate disparate-impact liability.”