Transgender students have long been overlooked. But that’s about to change.

This week, in a landmark move for LGBT rights, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a 53-page guidance report that aims to protect transgender students by prohibiting discrimination against them. Title IX—the civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs and activities—now also bars discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

In the guidance, OCR wrote: “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity and OCR accepts such complaints for investigation. Similarly, the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of the parties does not change a school’s obligations.”

Since 1972, when the Title IX law passed, every educational program in the United States that received federal funding was required to exercise gender equality for boys and girls. If programs and schools failed to do so, they risked the loss of funding for numerous programs that keep schools running in this country.

But now the 16,000 public school districts, 3,200 colleges and universities, and 5,000 for-profit schools—as well as libraries and museums—that receive Title IX federal funds must also include transgender and gender-nonconforming students. Feminist writer and longtime gender activist Stephanie Gilmore says it’s about time.

“This policy extends our legal protection of sex and gender to all people, not just men and women who identify with the sex and gender assigned at birth,” she says. “We now have legal protection for people of all sexes and genders, and a legal awareness that the cultural norm of ‘male’ and ‘female’ do not apply to everyone.”

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The “announcement is a breakthrough for transgender students, who too often face hostility at school and refusal by school officials to accept them for who they truly are,” Harper Jean Tobin, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement.

Transgender students are often excluded from school activities such as field trips and are bullied relentlessly in schools across the United States. A recent study by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network shows that 80 percent of transgender students feel unsafe at school because of their sexuality.

“They often are not allowed to attend school functions, such as prom, or participate fully in their own education,” Gilmore says. “Transgender students often don’t have role models in the classroom or in the curriculum. The expansion of Title IX to transgender people means that students will have legal recourse.”

This week’s ruling makes it clear that schools must provide equal access to all facilities and programs consistent with a student’s gender identity, and must ensure that all students are respected and safe on campus. If a school fails to do so, students can take it to court and file a civil rights complaint.

The transgender guidance was wrapped with a larger guidance document on the responsibilities of schools to prevent and respond to sexual violence against any students, announced by the Obama administration, which has long been an advocate against student violence.

The guidance explicitly outlines that if a school ignores a student’s complaint about sexual assault or harassment by another student and the complainant’s grades suffer, the school may need to allow him or her to retake classes without academic or financial penalty.

A website was also launched this week, NotAlone.gov, that collects resources for students and schools and reports settlements with schools related to sexual violence on campus—including aggression against transgender students.

“Title IX is getting a lot of attention in the press because college students are using it to open federal investigations and sue colleges for mishandling or underreporting sexual violence and rapes on college campuses,” Gilmore says. “Given that transgender students are often targets of physical and sexual violence, they will now have a legal option to pursue legal remedy. This will not stop sexual violence from happening, but it will give protection to transgender students.”

This article was created as part of the social action campaign for the documentary TEACH, produced by TakePart’s parent company, Participant Media, in partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates.