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Education Law

Title IX Blog

News, legal developments, commentary, and scholarship about Title IX, the federal statute prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded schools.
By Erin Buzuvis, Sudha Setty, and Kristine Newhall

Post Frequency: 3.4/day

Last Entry: July 16, 2010 at 08:42:00

Fresno State Settles With Former Assistant Track Coach

Posted on November 09, 2009
We blogged earlier this year about Ramona Pagel's case against Fresno State, in which she claimed that the athletic department failed to renew her contract and passed her over for promotion to head coach because she advocated for equal treatment for female athletes...

OCR to Investigate Whether University of Kansas Athletics Discriminates Against Men

Posted on November 07, 2009
According to CollegeSwimming.com, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights will investigate a complaint filed against the University of Kansas last month, alleging that the University's failure to offer a men's swimming and diving team violates Title IX...

Jury Finds for UW in Rape Case

Posted on November 06, 2009
Here is an update to yesterday's post about the trial against University of Washington regarding its handling of a student's rape charges against a football player. While jurors apparently viewed the UW's conduct as constituting deliberate indifference, they did not agree that the plaintiff satisfied another element for institutional liability under Title IX for peer harassment...

More Universities Add Competitive Cheer... I Mean, "Team Stunt and Gymnastics"

Posted on November 06, 2009
A recent article in Athletic Business profiles the apparent trend in college sports -- competitive teams in an activity formerly(?) known as cheerleading, now, at least in some circles, team stunt and gymnastics. Competitive cheer is nothing like sideline cheer, or the predominantly sideline cheerleaders who perform a competitive routine once a year at Nationals...

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UW Rape Case Goes to Trial

Posted on November 05, 2009
A jury will soon decide whether the University of Washington violated Title IX in its handling of claims that a football player had raped another student, his former girlfriend. As we have noted in a prior post, the victim, identified in court proceedings only as S...

Court Dismisses Retaliation Case Against National Geographic

Posted on November 04, 2009
A federal district court recently threw out Title IX claims against National Geographic Society after determining that it did did not retaliate against against the plaintiff, who had been the director of the NGS-affiliated entity that operated the National Geography Bee in North Dakota...

Connecticut Boy Calls State Field Hockey Policy Into Question

Posted on November 03, 2009
The Hartford Courant recently profiled a middle school field hockey player in Avon, Connecticut, named Blake Armistead. Though he has been allowed to play on the girls' team in middle school, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference does not allow boys to play on high school teams...

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to Look at Admissions, Athletics

Posted on November 02, 2009
InsideHigherEd.com reports today that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has commenced an "inquiry" into admissions standards that may be favoring male applicants who are increasingly underrepresented in the student bodies of many liberal arts colleges...

Early talk of retaliation in firing of tennis coach

Posted on October 29, 2009
Last week, Ball State University in Indiana fired its women's tennis coach. Kathy Bull was in her 22nd year as head coach of the team. The firing, according to the athletic department, is the result of NCAA violations. Ball State, until earlier this month, had been on NCAA probation due to a textbook scandal several years ago...

In case you didn't believe us...

Posted on October 21, 2009
...it's true that most athletic departments do not make money and many are not even breaking even these days. The NCAA released the results of a study this week that looked at the numbers from 2004-2008. In DI, the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) consists of 119 schools...

Lax growing in popularity

Posted on October 20, 2009
Hilbert College in New York will be adding men's and women's lacrosse next year, reflecting a trend--a couple actually. First lacrosse is at or near the top of the list of fastest-growing sports at both the high school and collegiate level and for both men and women...

Women's wrestling coming to Texas

Posted on October 16, 2009
High school wrestling in Texas may not be as big as football but 7,000 high schoolers compete in the sport. But there are no intercollegiate wrestling programs in the state.Wayland Baptist University in Plainview is changing that. The university will add men's and women's wrestling in 2010 and hopes to be a trend setter in terms of the presence of the sport in Texas colleges and universities...

Settlement Ends Title IX Suit Against FHSAA

Posted on October 15, 2009
The controversy in Florida that resulted when the state's athletic association that proposed a cost-saving schedule reduction for every sport except football and cheer was largely resolved over the summer, when the FHSAA rescinded the proposal in response to a lawsuit...

Lower Court Dismisses Former AD's Case Against Lafayette College

Posted on September 30, 2009
Eve Atkinson sued Lafayette College in 2001, arguing that the college terminated her from the athletic director position, which she had held since 1989, in retaliation for her advocacy on behalf of women's athletics and Title IX. A federal court initially dismissed her lawsuit on the grounds that Title IX's private right of action did not cover retaliation claims...

Law Review Article Addresses Sexual Harassment in Athletics

Posted on September 29, 2009
The current issue of the Virginia Sports and Entertainment Law Journal contains new scholarship by the prolific Title IX expert Diane Heckman, which addresses Title IX sexual harassment cases in the athletic context. Heckman first provides overview about the legal standard for an institution's sexual harassment liability and also explores the unique power dynamic between coaches (particularly, male coaches) and student athletes (particularly, female athletes) that can create sexualized environment rife for harassment...

Will Maryland be the next to cut sports?

Posted on September 27, 2009
Hopefully not, says athletic director Deborah Yow. But despite early predictions that the recession is over, the University of Maryland is exploring all scenarios that would enable to survive the current economic crisis.A recent report has outlined possibilities for keeping the department financially stable enough while remaining successful throughout the coming years of potential hardship...

Movie review: License to Thrive

Posted on September 23, 2009
The people at Women Makes Movies very kindly sent us a copy of License to Thrive: Title IX at 35. Despite our best intentions, we had not been able to catch a viewing of it when the documentary was making the rounds in New England last year.A lot of interesting stories and facts within the 48-minute movie by Harvard alum Theresa Moore...

ACLU Challenges Sex Segregation in Louisiana School

Posted on September 22, 2009
On behalf of parents of students at Rene A. Rost Middle School in Kaplan, Louisiana, the ACLU has sued the Vermilion Parish School District to challenge the sex-segregated classes there. According to the complaint, the district announced to parents over the summer that their children would be enrolled in sex-segregated classes...

Law Review Article Addresses School Violence

Posted on September 21, 2009
In the current issue of the Journal of College and University Law, Georgetown Law Center's Nancy Cantalupo examines the interrelatedness of peer sexual violence and other, more rare forms of school violence such as mass shootings. She argues that schools should address both types of violence with a victim-centered approach that encourages reporting...

Myles Brand, 1942-2009

Posted on September 17, 2009
Sadly, NCAA president Myles Brand died yesterday of pancreatic cancer. Christine Brennan has a nice tribute to him. Brand will hopefully be remembered for ensuring academic standards and civil and gender rights in intercollegiate athletics. He pressured schools to get rid of their Native American mascots and recently Brand publicly stated that Title IX should not be blamed--in these tough economic times--for cuts to men's sports...

California HS Improves Softball Field After Title IX Complaint

Posted on September 15, 2009
A reader sent me this good news out of California: the Torrance Unified School District has improved the softball fields at West High School after a Title IX complaint filed last fall cited the district with 20 possible violations. The district settled to avoid litigation, and to its credit, moved quickly to install new fields, electronic scoreboards, and spectator bleachers in time for the beginning of the 2010 season -- a total cost of $40,000...

Thanks, C. Vivian Stringer

Posted on September 14, 2009
New Hall of Fame inductee C. Vivian Stringer gave a big shoutout to Title IX during her speech at the Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony on Friday evening. All the clips I have seen of the speech--including the ones on ESPN!--use the portion of her speech where she thanks the existence of Title IX for giving girls sport options besides sideline cheering for the boys.

ACLU, School District Settle Harassment and Discrimination Case

Posted on September 11, 2009
The Newport-Mesa School District in Orange County, California, has agreed to implement harassment and discrimination training for its students and staff, in settlement of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. As we noted last March, the ACLU sued the school district on behalf of a former student of Corona del Mar High School, who alleged that school officials did not respond adequately when three football players harassed her and threatened her with rape...

CVS in the HOF

Posted on September 10, 2009
C. Vivian Stringer, head coach of the Rutgers women's basketball team, will be inducted tomorrow into the Basketball Hall of Fame (right here in Springfield). We here at the Title IX Blog have much respect and admiration for Coach Stringer, and we are thrilled to see her recognized alongside Michael Jordan, John Stockton, David Robinson, and Jerry Sloan, the other inductees...

Same-sex classrooms in South Carolina

Posted on September 08, 2009
We have blogged about same-sex classrooms in public schools previously and this article out of Greenville, SC does not appear to say anything new about the situation. It is a quite balanced piece that uses narratives from same-sex classroom teachers and parents as well as research and testimony from educational researchers...

New Book Examines Challenges Facing Women Coaches

Posted on September 03, 2009
In her new (2009) book, Gender Games: Why Women Coaches Are Losing the Field, author Christina Cruz examines gendered dynamic of college athletic departments and the tensions that it creates for female coaches. These tensions, which Cruz labels "micro-competitions" likely explain why the percentage of coaches who are female has diminished from over 90% to 43% in the last thirty years...

Study Finds Correllation Between Sexist Team Names and Women's Athletic Opportunities

Posted on September 02, 2009
A recent article (well, 2008, but it only just now came across my radar) in the journal Sociology of Education examines team nicknames in college and university athletics and suggests that schools that use sexist nomenclature to distinguish their women's teams are also likely to offer disproportionately fewer athletic opportunities to women...

Colorado making progress

Posted on August 31, 2009
As part of University of Colorado's settlement of a sexual harassment lawsuit with two former students, the university hired lawyer, law professor, and Title IX expert Nancy Hogshead-Makar to review existing gender discrimination and sexual harassment policies and recommend new ones...

Former Hawaii AD sues

Posted on August 26, 2009
University of Hawaii-Hilo administrators have been named in a recent lawsuit filed by former athletic director Kathleen McNally who is alleging both racial and gender discrimination. We have not seen an intersectional complaint in a while, though how much credence a court will give the racial claim remains to be seen, especially because the evidence seems to border on hearsay...

Professor Settles Discrimination Case Against Penn State

Posted on August 25, 2009
Penn State and a former assistant professor have reached a settlement to terminate the professor's lawsuit alleging that she was not promoted due to discrimination on the basis of her sexual orientation. The plaintiff, Constance Matthews, had applied for promotion and tenure in 2004, after serving as an assistant professor in the College of Education since 1998...

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