A Victory for Female Athletes in Oldham County, Kentucky

Girls at two high schools in Oldham County, Kentucky have something to celebrate. The United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently told Oldham County High School and South Oldham High School that they must develop a plan to comply with Title IX by providing equal locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities to their female athletes. A courageous dad whom we represent in this matter, Dick Richards, gets credit for challenging the disparities in facilities through an administrative complaint on behalf of his daughter and other girls in the county.

Mr. Richards pointed out that both high schools have separate field houses for boys’ teams with amenities such as weight rooms and viewing rooms with audiovisual equipment. The field house at Oldham County High School houses the boys’ football and baseball locker rooms, is relatively new, and cost $1.43 million dollars. Nothing similar was built for the girls.

So far, OCR has found that girls are being shortchanged with regard to the exclusivity of locker rooms, number of lockers, and amenities such as shower facilities. OCR is still monitoring the schools, however, so there may be other disparities that emerge and need to be addressed.

Meanwhile, Mr. Richards has created a website devoted to evaluating gender equity in Kentucky’s high school athletic programs. He provides a lot of data that are difficult to find given that high schools, unlike colleges, are not required by federal law to make gender equity in athletics information public. You can check out the information he has posted at http://www.titleixkentucky.org/.