More Title IX Scholarship

Here is a roundup of articles and chapters about Title IX that have been published recently:

Attorney Kristen Galles -- known for her victories against Quinnipiac and the Michigan HS Athletic Association-- published Title IX and the Importance of Reinvigorated OCR in the journal Human Rights. In this brief essay, she explains the role that OCR plays not only in enforcement, but in educating schools and universities about their obligations under Title IX. She argues that OCR has the potential make an even greater difference combating sex discrimination in school, and is hopefully optimistic that the newly-recommitted agency can one day work her, a Title IX litigator, out of a job. Citation: Kristen Galles, Title IX and the Importance of Reinvigorated OCR, Human Rights, at 37 (Summer 2010).

Michelle Gaugh published an article about Title IX's application to discrimination against parenting and pregnant students in the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law. In it, she points out that such discrimination persists despite a clear regulatory prohibition against treating pregnant students any differently from others who may have a temporary medical condition that requires accommodation. She also explains that there have been relatively few efforts to address this discrimination in court, primarily because victims lack awareness of their rights and socially and legally marginalized. She argues that increasing awareness about Title IX's application to pregnant and parenting students, including educating teachers and other advocates, as well as increased enforcement and oversight from OCR, can help curb this variety of sex discrimination. Citation: Michelle Gaugh, Parenting and Pregnant Students: An Evaluation of the Implementation of the "Other" Title IX, 17 Michigan J. Gender L. 211 (2010).

Professor Deborah Brake has posted to SSRN a chapter called Sport and Masculinity: The Promise and Limits of Title IX, which will appear in the book Masculinities and Law: A Multidimensional Approach (Frank Rudy Cooper and Ann C. McGinley eds. 2011). Brake points out that, "[w]hile Title IX has greatly expanded the range of culturally valued femininities for women, and broadened the social category of "woman" in the process, it has not broadened the masculinities that sport constructs for male athletes, nor has it made significant inroads into the hyper-masculine ethos that pervades the most-valued men’s sports." Title IX reinforces the hegemonic masculinity replicated through in several ways, "including Title IX’s default rules approving of sex-segregated teams and its limited integration rights, and an equal treatment standard that accepts as a baseline the hierarchies within men’s sports that privilege the most masculine sports, football and basketball." Then she addresses how Title IX might nevertheless be used to "intervene in the production of masculinity," in light of a trend of "recent cases in which Title IX has held educational institutions accountable for the harms caused by extreme performances of hyper-masculinity, including sexual assaults by male athletes of women and of other male athletes."