District Court drops Title IX case

The issues surrounding the current enforcement of Title IX are many and controversial. A federal court ruling on June 11 did not treat these issues.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, presiding over the District of Columbia District Court, dismissed a lawsuit alleging illegal discrimination by the Education Department against male athletes on what amounted to a procedural matter.

The National Wrestling Coaches Association and several other coaches associations brought the suit, but were ruled not to have standing to do so.

The Justice Department's argument, which claimed the athletic organizations could not prove the reduction of male sports would cease even if they won their case, was the one that prevailed.

Sullivan ruled that colleges could stand by their decision to cut male sports for any number of reasons.

From 2000-2002, Penn wrestling coach Roger Reina was president of the National Wrestling Coaches Association which originally filed suit in January of 2002.

The NWCA was joined by the Collegiate Swimming Coaches Association of America, United States Track Coaches Association and Collegiate Gymnastics Association.

"I'm not at all surprised by the ruling," Reina said. "We're looking forward to bringing an appeal."

Title IX, which became law in 1972, prohibits sex-based discrimination in sports or academics in any school that receives federal money, and is frequently credited with the boom in collegiate female athletics over the past quarter-century. In cases that usually relate to race, quotas have been ruled to be illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Reina, and the lawsuit, alleges that the proportionality aspect of Title IX is essentially an illegal quota system.

Proportionality of male and female athletes in a school to their total number in the student population is one of three ways that a school can prove its compliance with Title IX by a 1979 statute. Since, the other two "prongs" of the test are less tangible -- focusing on satisfying interest and proving a history of promoting women's sports -- most schools ensure their compliance by passing the proportionality prong.

At issue was whether schools cut male programs to satisfy proportionality.

Since these cuts could be justified in other way, Sullivan dismissed the case.

The organizations behind the suit "wholly support Title IX," Reina said. "It's proportionality that has to go."

Despite last week's setback, Reina remains optimistic that this lawsuit could bring about changes in the rules regulating Title IX.

"They will be changed," Reina said. "It's just a matter of time and the right courts looking at it."

Wrestling has been one of the hardest hit programs in the alleged cutting of male sports to satisfy proportionality. Since the enactment of Title IX, 160 of 250 Division I wrestling programs have been cut. It is achieving proportionality through these means that Reina says the suit is attempting to stop.

"We're fully in support of Title IX," Reina said. "If males are being cut because they're males, that's in violation of the original intent of Title IX."

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