In a blow to organizations trying to reform or repeal Title IX, the Supreme Court has refused to hear a case that claimed that the 1972 gender discrimination law is responsible for schools cutting men's athletic programs.
On June 6, the nation's highest court denied certiorari in the case of National Wrestling Coaches Association v. Department of Education without comment.
This is a major blow to the NWCA, which has mounted a series of lawsuits against the Department of Education -- responsible for the enforcement of Title IX -- starting in January 2002. Penn wrestling coach Roger Reina was the president of the NWCA when these lawsuits first started.
NWCA executive director Mike Moyer is not dissuaded by the most recent ruling.
"We're more determined than ever to continue and to seek a more reasonable and fair solution," he said. "Men's teams continue to be eliminated."
According to NCAA officials, the number of NCAA wrestling teams is indeed on the decline. Over the past twenty years, the number of teams has dropped from 363 to 222.
Moyer argues that wrestling and other minor men's sports teams are being cut so that schools can have a proportional number of male and female athletes to the rest of the student body. This is one way for institutions to remain Title IX compliant.
Title IX advocates, however, argue that the law is not the reason for the decline in minor men's sports, such as wrestling.
"Title IX cannot be blamed for cuts to men's teams," Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, said in a statement. "It's high time the wrestlers stopped using this important law as a scapegoat for their own problems."
Neena Chaudry, senior council for the NWLC, told The Summer Pennsylvanian that a more likely cause for the decline in wrestling programs around the nation is athletic departments' excessive spending on men's basketball and football programs. This forces them to have cut teams, and ? unable to cut women's teams because of Title IX ? they end up having to eliminate a men's program.
Chaudry suggested that if schools spent less money on men's basketball and football, they would not have to cut programs like wrestling. An NWLC fact sheet entitled "Title IX and Men's 'Minor' Sports: A False Conflict" notes that football and men's basketball consume 72 percent of the total men's operating budget at Division I-A schools.
Penn, which is a Division I-AA institution, spends $540,137 combined on its football and men's basketball programs, according to its most recently filed gender-equity report with the Department of Education. This is only 39 percent of its total men's operating budget.
According to Moyer, the next step for the NWCA is to join with other coaching organizations on the College Sports Council to fight Title IX. This organization is made up of both men's and women's groups.
Moyer said that women's sports teams with small rosters, like field hockey, are equally frustrated with Title IX, as they are often replaced by women's teams with larger rosters.
Data from the NWLC confirms Moyer's claim. It notes that while 34 percent of NCAA member institutions sponsored women's field hockey teams in 1982, only 23 percent sponsored the sport in 2000.
Moreover, Moyer said his organization may concentrate on suing individual institutions that have eliminated programs instead of the federal government. A U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit suggested this route to the NWCA in May 2004 when it affirmed a district court ruling that dismissed NWCA v. Department of Education.
