Title IX - Rancocas Valley Regional High School



Title IX

Also known as: Educational Amendments Act; Public Law 92-318  

Date: 1972

From: Encyclopedia of Women's History in America, Second Edition.

Mandating that "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal assistance," Title IX (Public Law 92-318) has improved the quality of many educational programs for women. It was sponsored by Rep. Patsy Mink.

Because the proposed act affected the funding of women's athletic programs and the establishment of athletic scholarships for women—as well as educational admissions, course placement, and campus housing—it was strenuously opposed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, an organization of over 700 educational institutions with annual revenues of more than $10 million from activities such as televised college football and basketball games. Women's organizations such as the Women's Equity Action League, the National Organization For Women, the National Women's Political Caucus, the League Of Women Voters, the American Association Of University Women, and the Girl Scouts were equally organized on behalf of Title IX, however, and the act passed in June 1972. Its most visible impact has perhaps been on female athletes: In 1970, only one in twenty-seven girls played high school sports; in 1999, that figure is one in three. At the college level, 37 percent of varsity athletes are female, and their opportunities after graduation are wider than ever before. The dominance of American women at the 1996 Olympic Games, the success of the Women's National Basketball Association, and the winning of the Women's World Cup by the U.S. women's soccer team in 1999, were widely hailed as a victories for Title IX as well as for the women athletes involved.

Title IX has had an equally large impact on other educational forefronts, such as women's admission to medical, law, and graduate schools.

In its earliest years, Title IX was interpreted in such a way that federal funding was withheld from an entire institution if any one of the institution's programs or activities discriminated against women. In 1984, however, the Supreme Court's ruling in Grove City College v. Bell permitted institutions to receive federal funds for their nondiscriminatory programs and prohibited the funding of only those specific programs or activities that discriminated against women. The Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988 restored the original interpretation and also prohibited discrimination on the basis of age, disability, or race.

Most recently, the Supreme Court ruled on schools' liability for sexual harassment under Title IX. In a 1998 case, Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, the Court ruled that schools could not be held liable for teacher harassment of students unless administrators capable of interceding knew of the harassment and made an "official decision" to ignore it. In 1999, in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, the Court specified that schools could be held liable for student-to-student harassment if administrators knew of severe and pervasive sexual harassment and failed to protect targeted students.

From: Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court.

Title IX, enacted as part of the Education Amendments of 1972, provides that "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Title IX applies to both public and private schools, from kindergarten through graduate school, so long as the educational program receives any form of federal funding. The then Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW)—which is today's Department of Education (DOE)—was charged with regulating Title IX, and the office for Civil Rights (OCR) was charged with enforcing its provisions. In 1975 HEW issued a set of regulations that made Title IX applicable to a range of areas within education, including student recruitment, admissions, course offerings, housing, financial aid, and athletics.

The history of Title IX and the Supreme Court essentially begins with the ruling in Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677 (1979). Here, the Court said that Title IX is enforceable through an implied private right of action, thereby permitting individuals to bring lawsuits under the statute. However, since Title IX did not explicitly provide for the availability of compensatory damages, its effectiveness was limited. The Supreme Court's decision in Grove City College v. Bell, 465 U.S. 555 (1984), further limited the scope of Title IX. Here, the Court interpreted the statue to authorize the withholding of funds only from specific programs that discriminated against women, rather than from the educational institution as a whole. In 1988 Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which overrode the Court's ruling in Grove City. It was not until Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, 503 U.S. 60 (1992), that the Court ruled that students in schools receiving federal funds may sue for and win damages in sexual discrimination cases under Title IX.

Title IX has also been extended to cases involving sexual harassment within schools. Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District, 524 U.S. 274 (1998), held that damages for student-teacher sexual harassment cannot be recovered unless school officials have actual notice of, and are "deliberately indifferent" to, the teacher's conduct. In Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education, 526 U.S. 629 (1999), the Court held that, in cases of student-on-student sexual harassment, individuals may recover damages when the educational institution receiving federal funding has actual knowledge of and is deliberately indifferent to the harassment, and where the harassment is so severe, pervasive, and offensive that it deprives individuals of educational opportunities.

Even though Title IX is applicable to many areas within education, such as student recruitment and admissions, today it has become predominantly associated with athletics. In 1979 HEW issued a policy interpretation in order to assess educational institutions' compliance with Title IX in the realm of athletics. Schools could demonstrate compliance if they met any one of the following criteria: (1) whether athletic opportunities for male and female students are "provided in numbers substantially proportionate to their respective enrollments"; (2) whether the institution can demonstrate a continuing expansion of their programs to match the developing interest of the members of the underrepresented sex; (3) whether it can be shown that current programs have fully accommodated "the interest and abilities" of the underrepresented sex.

One of the most well-known cases involving Title IX and athletics is a federal appeals court ruling in Cohen v. Brown University, 101 F.3d 155 (1st Cir. 1996). The court held that Brown, which had eliminated some women's sports teams, had violated Title IX, as women made up 51 percent of the student body but only 39 percent of all Brown's athletes. Notably, regarding the third prong of the test for Title IX compliance, the court reasoned that women could not be presumed to be less interested than men in athletic participation, thereby leaving proportionality as the primary indicator of Title IX compliance. The Supreme Court decided not to hear Brown's appeal, so the ruling remains as nonbinding legal precedent.

Title IX has received mixed support from the American public. Its proponents argue that the legislation has been essential for the movement toward gender equity in education, while its critics argue that it is essentially a quota system, particularly as applied to athletic programs, and is discriminatory against men. Moreover, the debate over the implementation of Title IX has generated much controversy and spurred costly legal action in recent years. Therefore, Title IX remains an important battleground in the fight for women's equality, and there exists potential for future reform of its provisions.

From: The Encyclopedia of North American Sports History, Second Edition.

Women's sports got its greatest single boost from Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972, prohibiting sexual discrimination by any school or college receiving federal aid. There was no immediate impact until 1975, when the Department of Health, Education and Welfare adopted an implementing regulation that set up an adjustment period for sports programs, requiring that all institutions must be in compliance by July 21, 1978. Many schools and colleges had already begun to expand women's sports programs as a result of Title IX, and many more of them took action after the regulation was adopted.

There was still considerable confusion about what Title IX actually required, and the HEW in 1977 began drafting specific enforcement principles, which were released on December 6, 1978. A "financial-proportionality" standard in scholarship money was adopted as the major test of compliance. "If 70 percent of a school's athletes are male," HEW Secretary Patricia Harris explained, "they are entitled to 70 percent of the financial aid their school makes available." Equivalency tests were also established for travel allowances, scheduling, coaches' pay, and the availability of sports equipment and facilities.

Even before the standards were established, Title IX had a major impact. In 1970–71, only 7.4 percent of high school students participating in interscholastic sports were girls; that increased to 17.2 percent in 1972–73, 23.5 percent in 1974–75, and 31.9 percent in 1978–79. Girls' basketball was offered at 4,856 schools in 1970–71; that figure grew to 17,617 in 1978–79. Figures for individual participation in college sports aren't available, but the average number of intercollegiate sports offered for women doubled from 2.5 in 1973–74 to 5.0 in 1978–79 (the men's average increased from 7.3 to 7.4 during the same period). It was estimated that women's intercollegiate sports received 1 percent, or less, of the average college's total budget in 1970–71; that was up to 16.4 percent in 1978–79.

The new emphasis on women's sports programs led the NCAA to inaugurate national championships for women, beginning with cross-country, field hockey, and volleyball in 1981, followed by basketball, fencing, golf, gymnastics, lacrosse, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, tennis, and outdoor track and field in 1982, and indoor track and field in 1983. The NCAA began compiling participation figures for men and women in 1981–82, when there were only 64,390 women taking part in intercollegiate sports, compared to 167,055 men. By the 1998–99 school year, the number of women athletes had increased by 226 percent, to 145,832, while the number of male athletes increased by only 24 percent.

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