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Title IX entitlement-Civil-rights legislation aimed to create opportunity; did it miss the target?

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

If President Bush's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics can conduct
its work without bias from within or strong-arming from without, it can
help end a festering civil-rights conflict that has pitted men against women in
college sports.

The commission's job is to review the effect of the federal
civil-rights law known as Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination at any school
receiving government money.

By Jan. 31, the panel is to issue a report card on the law and offer
recommendations for improving it.

When it was enacted 30 years ago, the law was intended to ensure that
women had equal opportunity in university admissions, programs, financial aid
and the like. In practice, the law's most dramatic effect has been on
university athletics.

Critics charge that Title IX, which was never intended to set up a
quota system for collegiate athletics, has been twisted to do just that. As
interpreted by the U.S. Department of Education and reinforced by a
1996 court decision, schools have been forced to eliminate men's athletic
programs, such as swimming, wrestling and golf, in order to meet
gender-equity goals.

According to the General Accounting Office, between 1992 and 2000,
schools added 1,919 women's teams and just 702 men's teams. During the same
period, schools cut 386 men's teams and only 150 women's teams.

No one can argue with the intent of the law. Women should not be denied
equal opportunities to participate in collegiate sports. But achieving
equity is not as simple as it might seem, because numerical disparities
are not necessarily the result of discrimination.

As currently enforced, the law says that if a school's enrollment is 55
percent female and 45 percent male, then its athletic program should
reflect those proportions, with 55 percent of athletes being women and 45
percent men.

But women participate in sports at lower rates than men do. So even if
a school is 55 percent female, proportionally fewer of them will want to
take part in athletics. If not enough go out for sports, then the number of
male athletes must be reduced until the magic 55-45 female-male ratio is
reached.

This means capping the number of men who may participate in a sport or
eliminating a men's sport. In essence, male athletes are unjustly
punished for the fact that a smaller proportion of women choose to take part in
athletics for reasons that have nothing to do with discrimination.

In the name of expanding athletic opportunities for women, the law has
taken away athletic opportunities for men. This was not the way Title IX was
intended to operate. In fact, a provision of the law explicitly forbids
the proportionality test, but that provision has been ignored.

In March, the National Wrestling Coaches Association, the College
Sports Council and several college wrestling associations filed a lawsuit in
federal court against the U.S. Department of Education. The lawsuit
alleges that Title IX has been turned into an illegal quota mandate that has
killed hundreds of men's teams, even at schools where no one alleged discrimination.

There is no doubt that Title IX has improved women's athletic
opportunities. By 1999, the GAO reported, women's collegiate sports teams outnumbered
those of men 9,479 to 9,149.

Advocates for female athletes, such as the National Women's Law Center,
fear that the commission's real job is to dismantle Title IX and undo the
progress made in women's athletics.

That is an overreaction. Millions of American families are invested in
athletics for their daughters and will not tolerate any rollback in opportunities.

Instead, Title IX should be modified to eliminate destructive quotas
while preserving protections for women. The commission's job is to find the
right way to do that.