Title IX Prompts SIU to Add Women's Soccer

Recently Southern Illinois University announced that it would add a women's soccer team in order to resolve questions about its Title IX compliance. Last year, the university's cost-cutting move to eliminate its men's and women's tennis teams along with several scholarships in men's swimming, prompted the filing of a Title IX complaint with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Cutting viable women's teams, even when a men's team is cut simultaneously, often violates Title IX because the school can no longer claim that is continuing to expand opportunities for the underrepresented sex (the second of the three-part test), or that is fully and effectively satisfying the interests of the underrepresented sex (the third of the three-part test).  A school that cannot comply with either of those tests must therefore show compliance with the proportionality standard (the first part of the three-part test), or risk enforcement action by the OCR. Most schools offer disproportionately higher percentage of opportunities to male than female students, and therefore have difficulty meeting this test. Indeed, publically available data about SIU's participation and enrollment suggests it does not satisfy the proportionality standard, since women constitute 46% of the student body but receive only 39.6% of the athletic opportunities.

This disparity existed before the tennis cuts as well, but at least then SIU could more plausibly claim that women's interests were fully satisfied, and thus that it demonstrated compliance under part three. Now, there is clearly an unmet interest in tennis, which some might suppose should be remedied by restoring the women's tennis team. But a university can decide which part of three-part test it demonstrates compliance -- any one of them will satisfy OCR. So adding women's soccer is a viable compliance strategy if in the end the percentage of female athletic opportunities rises to to 46%. In this spirit, SIU has pledged to OCR that it will add a women's soccer team that will have its inaugural season in 2019-20. 

Yet, adding soccer alone probably isn't going to be enough to bring the university into compliance. Even if the roster provided 30 opportunities, which is probably too many, that would only raise women's share of athletic opportunities to 43%.  This explains why the university has also committed to expanding opportunities on its existing teams, "to the maximum extent feasible... while still ensuring meaningful intercollegiate athletic opportunities are being provided for all team members." Done right, this will mean investing more resources to ensure the existing level of quality offered by current programs are not diluted as more players are added. If the university is seen to be padding its rosters on women's teams, it runs the risk of not being able to count those surplus opportunities in its proportionality calculation. The reporting requirements the university has agreed to will help OCR oversee this and the other aspects of the compliance agreement.

Sexual Harassment Litigation Roundup

Here is a roundup of news related to Title IX cases involving sexual harassment and assault:

• A former student at Arizona State has sued the Board of Regents claiming that the university failed to adequately protect her from a rape that occurred at a fraternity house.

• A district court judge set aside a jury verdict in favor of a Michigan student, who had sued the school district over its response to other students' perpetration sexual and anti-gay harassment. The case had been reinstated by the 6th Circuit after the district court dismissed on summary judgment. But considering new evidence presented at the jury trial, the district court judge held that the harassment was not severe and pervasive, but typical of middle school students, and that the school responded adequately by investigating each incident of harassment and punishing the perpetrators. See Patterson v. Hudson Area Schools, 2010 WL 2670167 (E.D. Mich. July 1, 2010).
  

• A district court in Indiana dismissed a plaintiff's case stemming from peer harassment because there was no support for plaintiff's claim the abuse was motivated by his gender nonconformity, only his perceived sexual orientation (which is not covered by Title IX). Turpin v. Good, 2010 WL 2560421 (S.D. Ind., June 24, 2010).
  

• A district court in Illinois dismissed a case in which a student challenged the university's response to his complaints about a professor's weird and inappropriate statements about the plaintiff's hair (the professor said that his hair would be sexy on a lady, and that if the plaintiff was a lady, he would want to date him). The court held that this did not constitute harassment based on the plaintiff's sex. The court also considered the fact that the professor harassed male and female students equally to cut against the plaintiff's argument that the harassment was motivated by his sex. Milligan v. Bd. of Trustees, 2010 WL 2649917 (S.D. Ill. June 30, 2010).
  

• A district court in Wisconsin denied a university's motion for summary judgment in a case arising out of a resident advisor's alleged assault on the plaintiff, a student, in her dorm room at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. The court agreed that the plaintiff's complaint contained sufficient allegations -- including that campus officials waited three days before calling the police -- that could allow a jury to find the university liability under Title IX. Albiez v. Kaminski, 2010 WL 2465502 (E.D. Wisc. June 14, 2010).