Article Examines Standing Issue in Title IX Case

In the current issue of Sports Lawyers Journal, student author Colton Puckett criticizes the federal court's standing analysis in American Sports Council v. Department of Education, the case in which ASC sought to have courts declare the three-part test inapplicable to high school athletics.  The federal court dismissed the case on the grounds that ASC did not suffer a concrete injury that would be redressed by a ruling against the Department of Education, i.e., that ASC did not satisfy the jurisdictional prerequisite known as standing.  (We blogged about that decision when it was announced last March.)  The author concludes:

To be clear, this Note is not commenting on the merits of the ASC's complaint. Whether one believes that Title IX is the savior of public athletic programs, the embodiment of all that is wrong with government regulation, or anything in between is irrelevant to the question at hand. The question is whether the ASC has a right to have its case heard in court. Whether one agrees with the ASC or not, it seems clear that its shotgun-style approach to standing should have garnered at least one hit. If this was indeed a case where the standing inquiry acted as a means to dismiss on the merits, the court should have let the ASC be heard, and let the merits of the case stand, or fall, on their own.

Colton Puckett, American Sports Council v. Department of Education: Forty Years of Title IX and Still Standing (Or Not), 20 Sports Lawyers J. 261 (2013).