receive federal funds through grants, scholarships, or other support for students. For schools that do not comply, they can be withdrawn from a school engaging in intentional gender discrimination in the provision of curriculum, counseling, academic support, or general educational opportunities. This law was passed to update the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The goal is to give equal opportunities to girls and women as boys and men athletes have. After much initial controversy, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) developed additional legal clarifications in 1975. This states that high schools had one year to comply with regulations and universities have three years to comply before they are punished. In 1979, the OCR created three legal tests to assess compliance with Title IX. They are the proportionality test, history of progress test, and the accommodation of interest test(Coakley, 2009). Title IX has remainded to be a debated topic between high schools, universities, and the Title IX committee. This law has given female athletes better opportunities to participate in sports and has led to a dramatice increase in women sport participation.
Quinnipiac University tried to reach compliance with Title IX by dropping its' womens' volleyball team and adding competetive cheerleading to its sports teams. Members of the volleyball team filed a lawsuit against the school stating this made them not compliant with Title IX. In July 2010, U.S. District Judge Stefan R. Underhill ruled that competitive is not an official sport for schools looking for ways to meet Title IX gender-equity requirements. Underhill gave Quinnipiac 60days to come up with a plan to keep the volleyball team and comply with gender rules. While counting roster sizes, Quinnipiac would count each member of the cross-country, and indoor, outdoor track teams which in some cases had female athletes that participated in all three sports being counted multiple times. Underhill ruled that these female runners may only be counted once(Cloutier, 2010).
“This victory gives force to the law that has opened doors for women over the last 30 years,” said Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. “Today’s ruling requires QU to stop playing games with the important principle of equal opportunity for women.”(Cloutier, 2010). This case will serve as a guideline for schools across the nation to use and possible model with lawsuits of universities not complying with Title IX requirements. Over the past 8 years, there have been 50 cases dealing with Title IX compliance(Lopiano, 2005). This number will continue to grow to enforce equity between men and women athletics.
Title IX Question and Answers: http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/Content/Articles/Issues/Title%20IX/T/Title%20IX%20Q%20%20A.aspx(Lopiano, 2005)
The 95 page Quinnipiac University Title IX Decision: click in the article to view pdf format:http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/22/quinnipiac(Moltz, 2010)
Coakley, J. (2009). Sports in society. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
Cloutier, B. (2010, July 21). Quinnipiac title ix case: school must maintain women's volleyball program . New Haven Register, Retrieved from http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/07/21/sports/doc4c4734ff92939185795573.txt?viewmode=fullstory
Moltz, D. (2010). Key title ix ruling. Inside Higher ED, Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/22/quinnipiac
Lopiano, D. (2005). Title ix q&a. Women's Sports Foundation, Retrieved from http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/Content/Articles/Issues/Title%20IX/T/Title%20IX%20Q%20%20A.aspx
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