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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

Trial Held in Potera-Haskins Case

Posted on April 30, 2010
We've been following the Title IX retaliation case against Montana State University, filed by former basketball coach Robin Potera-Haskins. Potera-Haskins claimed that she was terminated from her position because she complained about the inequitable conditions for the women's athletics including coaching salaries and benefits, access to facilities, funding for tournaments, and the university's efforts to secure corporate sponsors and otherwise promote the team...

Delaware State P.S.

Posted on April 29, 2010
The Delaware State University equestrian team wrapped up its season a couple of weeks ago. As we noted, the team will continue on for one more year, according to the university whose decision not to cut the team this year was reversed after two lawsuits were filed...

Eleventh Circuit Reinstates Teacher Harassment Case

Posted on April 29, 2010
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently decided a Title IX case in favor of the plaintiff, who alleged that a school district was liable under Title IX for sexual harassment perpetrated by her 9th-grade math teacher. The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, sued the Broward County, Florida school board after teacher Conraad Hoever sexually assaulted her in his classroom...

Grossman Explains and Analyzes Repeal of Model Survey Policy

Posted on April 28, 2010
In her regular column at Findlaw.com, Professor Joanna Grossman provides an easy-to-understand-but-nevertheless-thorough analysis of the Department of Education's recent decision to repeal the Model Survey policy, including what the policy's repeal may signal, politically...

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NCAA Gender Equity and Issues Forum: Part 2

Posted on April 27, 2010
Yesterday the Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, Russlynn Ali, addressed the NCAA Gender Equity and Issues Forum as the keynote speaker. It was great to be in an audience consisting of mostly of college athletic department officials as we cheered the Department of Education for rescinding the Model Survey policy last week and for promising to get tough with schools that are not in compliance with Title IX...

Congratulations!

Posted on April 26, 2010
Go to Nancy Hogshead-Makar who was named Senior Director for Advocacy for the Women's Sports Foundation. Professor Hogshead-Makar is a former WSF president and currently one of the busiest Title IX/gender equity advocates we know!We are very happy to have her filling this very important role within the organization and we wish her luck!

NCAA Gender Equity Issues Forum: Part I

Posted on April 25, 2010
Greetings from Oak Grove, Illinois, where the NCAA is holding its annual Gender Equity Issues Forum. Tomorrow, I will co-present with Barbara Osborne of UNC about institutional liability for athlete abuse, sexual and nonsexual. But today I had the pleasure of attending very informative plenary sessions...

No Retaliation Remedy for Parochial School Teacher

Posted on April 23, 2010
Aado Kommendant was a teacher and girls' softball coach at St. John Vianney High School in New Jersey until the school decided in 2004 not to renew his contract. The school claimed that Kommendant was fired for appropriating school property and misusing funds, but the coach believed he was fired in retaliation for filing a Title IX complaint the Office for Civil Rights about inequitable treatment of the softball team...

Texas volleyball player's case closed

Posted on April 22, 2010
High school volleyball player Mackenzie McCollum's complaint against her Texas school district has been dismissed. The Office of Civil Rights did not find sufficient evidence to suggest that the Fort Worth school disctrict employees violated Title IX when they limited McCollum's playing time after officials found out she was pregnant...

Ninth Circuit Revises UC Davis Decision

Posted on April 22, 2010
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently issued a revision to its decision, issued in February, that reinstated female wrestlers' case against the University of California at Davis. The revision does not change the outcome or the court's analysis of the main issue on appeal, which was district court's erroneous determination that the plaintiffs had to provide actual notice to the university before proceeding with their claim that its decision to eliminate women's wrestling opportunities violated Title IX...

The round-up on the re-clarification

Posted on April 21, 2010
I have to say I was a little surprised by all attention yesterday's announcement that the Obama administration would be repealing the 2005 policy interpretation allowing schools to rely solely on email surveys to show compliance with prong three received...

Stay tuned for a re-clarification

Posted on April 20, 2010
As Erin mentioned yesterday, the Department of Education is planning an announcement regarding compliance with prong three. Today Vice-President Biden will be the bearer of the news that the 2005 Office of Civil Rights "clarification" of the interests and abilities prong that allowed schools to use email surveys alone to gauge interest will no longer be acceptable...

Government, Lawyers Targeting Title IX Violations

Posted on April 19, 2010
A reporter at the Chronicle of High Education interviewed OCR Chief Russlynn Ali about OCR's enforcement plans for Title IX. Ali says that the agency is stepping up enforcement of Title IX in the next several months. It remains to be seen what this means, but I hope it means that the agency plans to be more proactive addressing violations and responsive to complaints that get filed by others...

UC Davis announces cuts

Posted on April 17, 2010
As expected, UC Davis will be cutting four sports due to the extreme budget shortfalls being experienced by California schools. Women's rowing, men's wrestling, men's track and field, and men's swimming and diving will not be on the slate of varsity sports next year...

Title IX Covers Harassment in Truck Driving Program

Posted on April 16, 2010
Truck driving is a male-dominated occupation. One source I read says that women are only about 5% of truck drivers nationwide. Like any gender disparity, I expect this one has its defenders; those who say that women are just less interested in doing that type of work, or naturally unqualified for some reason...

More on Pittsburgh audit

Posted on April 14, 2010
The people at the Women's Law Center (they brought attention to the potential gender equity problems in Pittsburgh in the first place) were kind enough to send us a link to their blog post on the Pittsburgh Title IX audit. The information I found initially was fairly vague...

Appeals Court Affirms Dimissal of Cyber Harassment Case

Posted on April 13, 2010
Here is a brief update on a cyber-harassment case we first blogged about last June. The plaintiff was a ninth grader when she received three harassing emails that were sent from another student's school email account. The student who owned the email account in question denied sending them, and the school could not prove that he had...

Pittsburgh audit complete

Posted on April 12, 2010
In early December of 2008 we wrote about the forthcoming Title IX audit of nine Pittsburgh area high schools. The findings of that audit, which was spurred by the Women's Law Center's initial research into gender equity in the public schools, were released last week at a school committee meeting...

The week of reinstatements? UNF follows DSU

Posted on April 10, 2010
Mere weeks ago, the University of North Florida announced it would be cutting its women's swimming and diving program in order to focus on its core group of sports, a focus that included distribution of monies and providing competitive opportunities for its student-athletes...

Bullying in the national spotlight

Posted on April 09, 2010
I live in western Massachusetts and yesterday, in the process of doing errands, I drove by the juvenille court in South Hadley; a building I had never noticed before. Except yesterday there was a cadre of news trucks and lines of cameras and reporters all trained on court doors...

DSU changes its mind

Posted on April 08, 2010
Right before a scheduled hearing before a district court judge in Delaware, Delaware State University announced it would keep its equestrian team for another year. This rendered, of course, the hearing, which was an attempt by the plaintiffs to get an injunction against the cut while the lawsuit was pending, unnecessary...

New CEO for WSF

Posted on April 02, 2010
The Women's Sports Foundation has named Kathryn Olson its new CEO.Olson is a former exec at Shutterfly and Leapfrog Enterprises. She lives in San Francisco and will be opening an office there though WSF headquarters remain in NY.Olson was already a member of the WSF Board of Trustees serving as the Vice-President of Governance.

Civil Rights Commission Endorses Model Survey

Posted on April 02, 2010
In a disappointing but not exactly surprising move, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has issued a report that endorsing the practice of colleges and universities to measure compliance with prong three by relying on the Model Survey method that the Department of Education created in 2005...

Delaware State Invokes Prong 2, Cheerleading in Defense

Posted on March 31, 2010
Delaware State University is reportedly defending its decision to cut the women's equestrian team by claiming it nevertheless complies with prong two: the compliance test that requires a university to show a history and continuing practice of expanding women's athletics...

Texas textbooks and Title IX

Posted on March 31, 2010
The recent changes to social studies curriculum in Texas will result in textbooks that talk about the "unintended consequences" of Title IX (and the Great Society, and affirmative action). The issue, of course, is that changes in Texas are likely to mean changes to textbooks used all over the country because of the large number of textbooks the state purchases...

Breaking news: Settlement in NY bullying case

Posted on March 29, 2010
In January, the federal justice department intervened in a Title IX case in Mohawk, NY involving a male teenager who has been bullied for allegedly acting too effeminate. The justice department agreed that Title IX offered protection against discrimination based on gender expression...

School Principal May Be Individually Liable for Teacher's Abuse

Posted on March 29, 2010
A recent Seventh Circuit decision addressed an elementary school principal's potential liability for a music teacher's sexual abuse of students. The students sued the school, the principal and the teacher on several theories of liability, including Title IX, constitutional violations, and state law claims...

NYT Examines Violence In Women's College Sports

Posted on March 25, 2010
In recent months, college sport has seen several high profile instances of violence by female athletes, from New Mexico soccer player Elizabeth Lambert pulling an opponent down by her ponytail to Baylor's Brittany Griner currently serving a two-game suspension for punching another basketball player...

University of North Florida cuts swimming and diving

Posted on March 24, 2010
The University of North Florida in Jacksonville, citing financial constraints, conference affiliation, and facilities, announced earlier this week that it will cut its women's swimming and diving team. There was no mention of any plans to add a different women's sport...

One way or another?

Posted on March 24, 2010
A panel on gender equity and intercollegiate sports held at Vanderbilt University Law School yesterday brought out a Title IX founder, a realist, and a wrestling coach.According to the AP coverage, the panel discussion focused on "whether the law requiring gender equity in college sports needs to be reformed or is simply being misinterpreted...

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