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Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel and Director of Equal Opportunities in Athletics

Neena Chaudhry is Senior Counsel and Director of Equal Opportunities in Athletics. Her work centers on litigation and advocacy to enforce and protect Title IX, primarily in the areas of athletics and sexual harassment. Prior to joining NWLC in 1997 as a Georgetown Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow, Neena clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is a graduate of Yale Law School and the University of Maryland at College Park.

My Take

Tinkering With Title IX

Posted by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel and Director of Equal Opportunities in Athletics | Posted on: October 16, 2008 at 07:09 pm

by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

This post is part of a series on the final days of the Bush Administration.

The Department of Education is at it again. Without any notice or opportunity for public input, its Office for Civil Rights has issued guidance to help schools decide which athletic activities they can count for Title IX compliance purposes. Sounds harmless, right? The Department goes on to say that the guidance does not represent a change in OCR’s policy under Title IX and simply represents its current thinking on this topic.

Danger, Will Robinson, danger! This is the same Department of Education that a few years ago, also without any warning, issued a “Clarification” that weakens Title IX by allowing schools to show that they are providing equal participation opportunities for women and girls simply by sending an e-mail interest survey to female students and interpreting a lack of response as a lack of interest.

Sticking with the law’s participation requirement, the Department’s focus this time is on which athletic activities count as sports for purposes of determining whether a school is providing equal participation opportunities. The question often arises about activities such as cheerleading, which are athletic but have not typically met the Department’s criteria for being counted as a sport under Title IX. Since 1975, the Department’s policy has been that cheerleading, drill teams and the like are presumed not to be sports under Title IX because, among other things, their primary purpose is to support other teams, not to compete. If, however, a school could show otherwise (i.e., if a school formed a competitive cheer squad whose function was solely to compete) and meet other factors set forth by the Department, then such an activity might legitimately be counted as a sport.

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Title IX Survives Another Attack

Posted by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel and Director of Equal Opportunities in Athletics | Posted on: September 12, 2008 at 06:38 pm

by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

A federal appellate court recently defended Title IX from yet another attack by male athletes who are upset about losing their teams. The men claimed that James Madison University discriminated against them in violation of Title IX and the U.S. Constitution by cutting seven men’s teams and three women’s teams – even though similar claims have been rejected by courts throughout the country. If you’re thinking that it doesn’t make sense to claim discrimination against men when women’s teams were also cut, you’re not alone. 

But this case is not really about logic. Rather, it is one in a series of attempts to ignore the truth and scapegoat Title IX for the loss of teams. The truth is that Title IX does not require or encourage schools to cut teams; it simply demands that schools treat males and females equally, surely something we can agree on. The truth is that schools decide how many and which teams to field based on a variety of factors, including interest, finances, and competitiveness. In this case, JMU admitted that it wanted to make its athletics program leaner and meaner. And the truth is that some schools have chosen to eliminate certain men’s sports, like gymnastics and wrestling, and even some women’s sports, rather than control bloated football and basketball budgets, which consume a whopping 74 percent of the average Division I-A school’s total men’s athletic operating budget. For example, San Diego State University decided to address its $2 million budget deficit by cutting its men’s volleyball team instead of cutting slightly into the $5 million football budget.

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NYT Magazine Focuses on Girls' Sports Injuries

by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

Sunday’s edition of the New York Times Magazine featured an extensive piece on the sports injuries, particularly knee injuries, that many girls have experienced and the need for injury-prevention training.   

For more, check out Sudha Setty’s excellent post on the article over at Title IX Blog.

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Let's Get Physical

by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

A new report by the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport reveals how far we still have to go to help girls become and stay physically active. The health and well-being of future generations of girls depends on it. 

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