Happy 40th Birthday, Title IX! Read All the Posts from NWLC’s Title IX Blog Carnival

I started teaching Sports Law in the mid-1980’s. I do not think I had heard of Title IX before then. When I started I probably did not spend much time on it. Although I prepared my own course materials, I relied upon 1979 treatise WEISTART AND LOWELL, THE LAW OF SPORTS, which included a sixteen page section entitled “Sex’ in the chapter on the Regulation of Amateur Athletics. Of those, three and a half were devoted to Title IX. The section opened with the observation that “[p]robably the most controversial rules in amateur athletics are those which classify persons who are eligible to participate on the basis of their sex.” I also looked to Ray Yasser’s 1985 SPORTS LAW casebook that devoted sixteen of sixty-six pages in the chapter entitled “Sexual Discrimination in Amateur Athletics” to Title IX. In any event, Title IX’s significance to the course ebbed with the Grove City College decision and rose again with the passage of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988. Today, the current Seventh Edition of YASSER, MCCURDY, GOPELRUD AND WESTON, SPORTS LAW devotes 47 of sixty-two pages to Title IX in the chapter entitled “Gender Equity in Amateur Athletics.” The language used to discuss Title IX issues has changed as much as the gender composition of college sports teams. I now use MITTEN, DAVIS, SMITH AND BERRY, SPORTS LAW AND REGULATION that contains a seventy-eight chapter entitled “Gender Equity Issues in Athletics” devoted almost exclusively to Title IX issues. Likewise, the chapter Intercollegiate Athletics: Gender Equity in WEILER, ROBERTS, ABRAMS AND ROSS, SPORTS AND THE LAW focuses primarily on Title IX.

I did not begin writing about Title IX until 1996 after my friend Linda Greene urged me to write about issues affecting Black women in my scholarship. She may not remember the conversation but I do. The result was Black Women, Gender Equity and the Function at the Junction. Perhaps, I chose to do so in sports law because I recall watching my sister playing six player basketball for the all Black W.A. Pattillo High School Trojans in the segregated school era. Maybe I did so because I recalled a class boycott staged by Black football players attending the White high school under a Freedom of Choice Plan when no Black girl made the cheerleading squad. But I may have done so because by then, our two daughters led busy sports lives competing in figure skating and track. Shortly after I wrote the article, my eldest daughter decided to try wrestling. As there were very few girls in the sport, they frequently had to wrestle boys. A local newspaper reporter thought a story on a figure skater who also wrestled made a wonderful human interest story. He called me. She had told him that I did not want her to wrestle and refused to go see her. Well I was not thrilled about it and had some anxiety when she called me to tell me one day that she had pinned a boy at an out of town meet. However, that was not the reason I did not go see her. My wife was commuting to and from her job in Phoenix and so I shuttled our three children to and from school and extra-curricular activities. Her school did not provide transportation to the meets so it was necessary for me to take her. Because I had to pick up her siblings from school and daycare, I would drop her off and then come back for her.

The story ran shortly before the next meeting of our university athletic council of which I was a member. Our university president had read the story and enjoined me to go see my daughter wrestle. I subsequently did. She was wrestling a boy. As fate would have it, it was not her best meet. She was able to take him down to the floor but on top of her. The wind was knocked out of her and she lay motionless on the mat. I watched patiently as I was accustomed to her taking hard falls on the ice but I had to restrain her little brother who wanted to go fight the boy. I saw her again at an exhibition for girls at the state championships. I still have her certificate. Alas, she gave up wrestling for running marathons. Her sister subsequently made the state championships in track and played soccer in college for the Spelman Jaguars. I told them sports were something to do just for fun. They still participate.

Title IX has had a profoundly positive transformative impact on American culture but the work is not yet finished on many fronts. I have focused on one in particular. I have continued to write and speak about Title IX and its impact on females of color, especially African Americans. Title IX has no doubt increased opportunities for women and girls but it has benefitted White women and girls disproportionately more. African American female athletes still have fewer opportunities to participate and obtain scholarships outside of basketball and track and field, and to obtain head coaching positions. I am committed to assuring that Title IX means equality for all women and girls regardless of race, color or ethnicity. Happy Birthday Title IX.