Brown U. appeals gender equity case

The Supreme Court has until June to decide whether or not it will review the Title IX case. Brown University appealed its athletics gender-bias case to the Supreme Court last week, alleging that regulations enforcing Title IX gender equity laws require athletics programs to adopt unreasonable gender quotas. The Brown women athletes suing their school argue that these regulations are the only way to ensure that women have an equal opportunity to play varsity athletics. Brown lost the case in the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals last November by a 2-1 decision. The Supreme Court has until June to decide whether to review the institution's appeal. Title IX mandates that all men and women who are "interested and able" to play a varsity sport should be allowed to do so. At issue is how an athletic program should determine who is actually "interested and able." Brown alleges that Title IX regulations mandate a gender balance between men's and women's teams equal to that of the student body. "That is inappropriate," Brown spokesperson Mark Nickel said, explaining that Brown bases its varsity gender balance on the "applicable pool" of interested and able students. Nickel said Brown hired polling firms which determined that "interested and able" students were 60 percent male and 40 percent female. The school also uses an Educational Testing Service question that asks incoming freshman whether they "want to play a varsity sport in college," Nickel said. He added that the plaintiffs must "demonstrate conclusively that men and women exhibit the same level of interest in varsity competition." Interest groups such as the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice believe that Brown's reliance on pollsters is deceptive. "It's bogus," TLPJ Executive Director Arthur Bryant said. Bryant said Brown's pollster has admitted under oath that his data show that two of Brown's long-established women's teams should theoretically not be viable due to low "interest" among female students. And he pointed out that Brown did not base its athletic program on student surveys, but is now trying to use polling to justify the program. "The bottom line is that Brown is trying to gut Title IX and turn the cause of women's equality in intercollegiate athletics back 20 years," he said. But Penn's Athletic Department thinks Brown has been unduly criticized. "Brown hasn't said, 'We don't believe in equal opportunity'," Associate Athletic Director Carolyn Schlie Femovich said, adding that Brown is contesting merely the government's application of Title IX, not the law itself. "I applaud their tenacity and determination to see this [lawsuit] to the nth degree," she said. Femovich added that she is glad Penn was able to settle its Title IX lawsuit out of court, without the negative publicity Brown has incurred.