Structure Versus Effect: Revealing the Unconstitutional Operation of Title IX's Athletics Provisions

Abstract

Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program receiving federal financial assistance, including athletics. Although the statute has brought great improvements in female athletics, such achievements have not come without problems. Title IX's complex regulatory framework, developed by the Department of Education, has led to numerous lawsuits. In early cases, courts interpreted and upheld the framework as consistent with Title IX. This Note argues, however, that the courts' early decisions and interpretation of the framework, coupled with educational institutions' current fiscal constraints, have left institutions with only one option for compliance: cutting men's teams. Such an inflexible framework amounts to a gender-based quota system that, under recent affirmative action caselaw, courts should hold unconstitutional. Only then will the Department of Education have the impetus to reinterpret the regulatory framework so that Title IX can operate in the way in which it was originally intended.