Earlier this month, the Kentucky Board of Education was the subject of a Title IX complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. According to a press release we received, the complaint identifies a statewide pattern of gender disparities in athletics, including participation opportunities, facilities, and the scheduling of "prime time" games. The complainant argues that the Board of Education's agent, the Kentucky High School Athletic Association, endorses these disparities through its policies and practices.
It will be interesting to see whether OCR responds more favorably to a complaint about a pattern of statewide discrimination that targets a single defendant, the state Board of Education, rather than those that target numerous individual school districts across a state, which OCR has avoided so far.
