Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel

As the old adage goes, you can't solve a problem unless you're able to define it.

We know that girls who play sports reap benefits both on and off the field. But we also know that girls across the country are still not getting equal opportunities to play sports or equal treatment when they do play. To make matters worse, when parents and students try to find out how their schools are allocating valuable athletic opportunities and resources, they are not able to get information.

High schools, like colleges, should be required to make information about their sports programs publicly available. Please ask your Members of Congress to support the High School Athletics Accountability Act, H.R. 458, and the High School Data Transparency Act, S. 1269. These two bills would require high schools to report information, broken down by gender, on sports participation and expenditures. Schools are already collecting this information, but since it is not public, parents and students cannot evaluate their athletics programs to make sure that girls are being treated fairly.

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.