Title IX
In April, the US Supreme Court let stand a ruling that strengthens a controversial interpretation of Title IX, the 1972 legislation that denies federal funding to universities that discriminate based on sex in scholastic sports. The newest interpretation makes it necessary for universities to have strict parity between men's and women's sports, or more precisely, the number of men and women athletes must mirror the ratio of men to women in the student body. In the court case, several female students sued Brown University when it cut two women's sports teams in 1991. At the time of the suit, Brown's overall enrollment was 51 percent female. Budget cuts left the school with 14 varsity sports for men and 14 for women, but only 38 percent of all varsity athletes were female. Brown's lawyers argued that the disparity reflected a difference of interest, not discrimination. Title IX opponents, such as groups of US college officials and men's sport associations, say that boys simply like sports more than girls. Strict parity, these groups say, is forcing the nation's colleges to cut men's teams or else increase the overall athletic budget--a near impossible feat in this era of cost cutting. Indeed, a recent study by the NCAA shows t
18 The enrollment rate exceeds the participation rate in varsity athletics at 297 of the 298 Division I schools. There is a large decrease in popularity from the eleven or twelve most popular women's sports to the remaining women's sports. In 1996, 44,000 women participated in Division I intercollegiate athletics, up 22 percent in four years. The proportionality requirement test rests entirely on the unsupported assumption that the proportion of men and women interested in varsity competition equals the proportion of men and women enrolled at a college or university. Rejecting the school's argument that the minority admissions plan was necessary to reduce the historic deficit of minorities in medical schools and the medical profession, a plurality of the Court found the plan fatally flawed. Prior to the Supreme Court's decision in Cannon v. Other evidence suggests that a greater percentage of men have an interest in making athletic competition a part of their college experience. 5% difference, whether Colorado State's expansion of women's athletic opportunities in the 1970s constituted a "history and continuing practice of program expansion" within the meaning of subsection (2), and whether, in eliminating men's baseball and women's softball simultaneously, Colorado State was providing "full and effective accommodation" of the interests and abilities of its female athletes within the meaning of subsection (3). 30 Title IX is applied to athletics in two regulations 31 issued in 1975 by the Office of Civil Rights ("OCR") of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare ("HEW"), 32 to which Congress delegated regulatory responsibility. RobertsIn 1992, Colorado State University announced the elimination of its women's varsity softball team and its men's varsity baseball team. Given this difficulty, the interest and ability factor is essentially a combination of interest in sports, high school varsity experience and competitive competence at the college level. This was a possibility the OCR was obviously prepared to overlook in an era of substantial non-compliance with respect to women athletes. 34 Congress held hearings on the regulation and did not disapprove the regulation during the 45-day period allowed under the GEPA.
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