Category: Title IX

Lawsuit Challenging Title IX Dismissed on Procedural Grounds

In June a federal court dismissed a lawsuit that argued the U.S. Education Department was engaging in sexual discrimination against men in the way it was enforcing Title IX.

The National Wrestling Coaches Association and several other athletic groups sued the Education Department claiming that the department is using an illegal quota system that results not in more female athletes at colleges and universities, but rather the elimination of men’s programs. Typically the Education Department threatens to withdraw funding from schools unless the ratio of male to female students is not brought more in line with the ratio of male to female enrollment at the school.

Since colleges and universities often find it difficult to meet that requirement, they often simply opt to cut less visible men’s sports programs such as wrestling. Since Title IX became law in 1972, almost 65 percent of men’s collegiate wrestling teams have been eliminated.

But the federal court considering the lawsuit ruled that the coaches associations lacked standing to bring the lawsuit. U.S. District Court judge Edward Sullivan wrote,

[Before contemplating] the dramatic step of striking down a landmark civil rights statute’s regulatory enforcement scheme, the Court must take pains to ensure that the parties and allegations before it are such that the issues will be fully and fairly litigated.

In the court’s view, plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden of persuasion

The Education Department formed a commission to look at Title IX enforcement which itself quickly bogged down in controversy, and in February Education Secretary Rod Paige said he would only consider recommendations from the commission that were unanimous.

Mike Moyer of the National Wrestling Coaches Association told the Associated Press that this was not the last word from his organization. “The fight is far from over,” Moyer told the AP. “Every day that goes by, and the quota system stays in place, men’s teams are going to continue to be eliminated in wholesale numbers.”

Sources:

Wrestling coaches’ suit dismissed in federal court. Associated Press, June 12, 2003.

District Court drops Title IX case. Andrew Delaney, Daily Pennsylvanian, June 19, 2003.

U.S. Judge Rejects Wrestling Coaches’ Challenge to Title IX. David Savage, The Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2003.

A Title IX Lawsuit Over Women’s Restrooms

Ann Arbor lawyer Jean King recently filed a lawsuit against the University of Michigan over the women’s restrooms at the recently renovated Hill Auditorium.

Michigan’s building codes require one toilet per 65 female patrons and 125 toilets per male patron. So when renovating the hall, the university sat down and figured out how many people would attend a sold-out show at the auditorium. It then reasoned that if half the patrons were men and half were women it would need 29 toilets for the women and 15 for the men to comply with the building codes. The restrooms finally built included 30 toilets for women and 22 for men.

Not good enough for King who says that anything less than two women’s toilets for every men’s toilet is a violation of Title IX’s proscriptions against sex discrimination in educational institutes.

King told the Ann Arbor News that if more women’s toilets are not added,

Our daughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters will no doubt still be waiting in line at Hill past the end of the intermission.

The university says that there simply is not any room for additional restroom facilities in the 89-year old auditorium.

And people wonder why Title IX is increasingly viewed with such hostility.

Source:

U-M faces restroom complaint. Peri Stone-Palmquist, Ann Arbor News, June 12, 2002.

Will the Heather Mercer Case Help or Harm Women?

When Heather Mercer won a $2 million judgment from Duke University, it was hailed as an important victory for women’s athletics. Instead it will likely shut the door for women who want to follow in Mercer’s footsteps.

Mercer wanted to be a kicker for Duke’s football team. She was given a tryout by the coach, but since her range was about 35-yards in practice, while a Division I school needs someone who can kick 45-yard field goals during a game, her coach cut her.

Mercer sued and a jury agreed that she had been discriminated against based on her sex. So why isn’t this a clear victory for women?

Because of the provisions of Title IX as they apply to sports. Under Title IX, if a school doesn’t have a women’s team in a given sport it must allow women to try out for the men’s team, with one important exception — contact sports are exempt from this rule.

That’s right, the current law is that if you allow a woman to try out to be a kicker on the football team and then cut her, she could potentially sue the university for sex discrimination as Mercer did. If you just tell the woman point blank, sorry football is a contact sport and the university doesn’t allow women to try out for such teams, the student has no recourse whatsoever.

The federal appeals court that allowed Mercer’s case to go to trial explicitly upheld the contact sports exemption writing, “we hold that where a university has allowed a member of the opposite sex to try out for a single-sex team in a contact sport, the university is, contrary to the holding of the district court, subject to Title IX and therefore prohibited from discriminating against that individual on the basis of his or her sex.”

The obvious reaction from universities seeing what happened in the Duke case will be to institute policies, either written or informal, to refuse try outs to women who want to participate on a men’s contact sport team.

In the end, Mercer’s legal victory will end up diminishing rather than enhancing women’s sports opportunities.

Source:

Sidelined! Kimberly Schuld, The Women’s Quraterly, Winter 2001.

Mercer v. Duke University. United States Court Of Appeals For The Fourth Circuit, No. 99-1014, Decided: July 12, 1999.