40 Fun Facts About Title IX

Which Yale women's team stripped in 1976 with Title IX written on their bodies to demand showers?

Rowing had no women's locker room at Yale's boathouse, so the crew sat waiting on the bus while the men washed. Their protest in the athletic director's office made newspapers worldwide, and a locker room followed by 1977.

Which sports body sued the federal government in 1976, calling Title IX's athletics rules illegal?

The NCAA lost when its suit was dismissed in 1978. Within a few years it was staging women's championships itself, which finished off the rival association that had been running them.

Title IX's own text carves out an exemption for college scholarships won in which kind of contest?

Beauty pageants were written in by a 1976 amendment, which also protected father-son and mother-daughter school events as long as the other sex gets something comparable.

Which president signed Title IX into law in June 1972 as part of a wider education bill?

Richard Nixon said nothing about women at the signing: his remarks dwelt on the bill's school busing provisions instead.

In a 2010 Title IX case against Quinnipiac University, a judge ruled which activity was not yet a sport?

Cheerleading was still too underdeveloped and unorganized to count, the judge found, so Quinnipiac could not use it to replace the women's volleyball team it planned to cut.

Which tennis champion started the Women's Sports Foundation in 1974, two years after Title IX passed?

Billie Jean King seeded it with $5,000 of her own award winnings, the same year she launched the magazine womenSports.

Heather Sue Mercer sued Duke University under Title IX after being cut from which men's team?

Football had never had a woman try out at Duke before Mercer, an all-state high school placekicker. An appeals court rejected the idea that contact sports are wholly exempt from Title IX.

A 2022 court ruling on Title IX and dress codes began when a North Carolina school made girls wear what?

Skirts promoted chivalry, the school's founder argued, but the full Fourth Circuit found the rule rested on gender stereotypes, and the Supreme Court declined to step in.

Title IX was renamed in 2002 for which Hawaii congresswoman, the first woman of color in Congress?

Patsy Mink sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, the year the law passed. Congress put her name on it weeks after she died in office.

Which president's veto did Congress override in 1988 to restore Title IX's reach across whole campuses?

Ronald Reagan's veto was the first of a civil rights bill since Andrew Johnson's in 1866, and Congress overrode it within a week.

Which Indiana senator, often called the father of Title IX, first introduced the measure in Congress?

Birch Bayh also wrote two constitutional amendments: the Twenty-fifth, on presidential succession, and the Twenty-sixth, which lowered the voting age to 18.

Which scholar, dubbed the godmother of Title IX, was once told she came on too strong for a woman?

Bernice Sandler answered by filing complaints against about 250 colleges, using an executive order that barred sex discrimination by federal contractors.

Which Texas senator's failed 1974 amendment would have exempted revenue-producing sports from Title IX?

John Tower's exemption was dropped by the conference committee. Congress instead adopted Jacob Javits's wording, which told regulators to make reasonable provisions for the nature of particular sports.

Which college gave its name to the 1984 Supreme Court ruling that narrowed Title IX's reach?

Grove City argued it took no federal funds at all. The Court said its students' grants counted, but only for the financial aid office, which left most athletic departments outside the law.

Which Ivy League school lost a landmark Title IX case after demoting women's gymnastics and volleyball?

Brown argued that women were simply less interested in sports than men. Two courts rejected that defense, and the university was ordered to restore the teams.

Which association ran women's college championships during Title IX's first decade before folding?

The AIAW proved women's sports could pay when its 1973 basketball final drew over 3,000 fans and turned a profit. That success drew in the larger men's governing body, which soon replaced it.

Which basketball star became the first woman to get a four-year athletic scholarship from UCLA, in 1974?

Ann Meyers claimed another first in 1979, when she signed a contract with the NBA's Indiana Pacers.

Which future Tennessee coaching great got no athletic scholarship in 1970, two years before Title IX?

Pat Summitt's brothers each had an athletic scholarship, but her parents had to pay her way through college. As a young head coach she washed the team's uniforms herself.

National Girls and Women in Sports Day began in 1987 to honor which Olympian who had died a year earlier?

Flo Hyman led the United States volleyball team to silver in 1984, then collapsed and died during a match in Japan from undiagnosed Marfan syndrome.

Which men's college sport lost 171 teams between 1981 and 1999, cuts its coaches blamed on Title IX?

Wrestling coaches took their complaint to court in 2002 and had it dismissed. A 2023 study found that the savings from cutting men's teams mostly went to bigger men's programs.

How many words long is Title IX's famous opening sentence, a count that titled a 2022 ESPN documentary?

37 words did the job, and none of them is "sports" or "athletics". ESPN's four-part series 37 Words marked the law's 50th anniversary.

Every school covered by Title IX must name at least one employee to serve as its Title IX what?

Coordinator is a required post, and the school must make that person's name, address and telephone number available to everyone.

Which Education Secretary withdrew Obama-era Title IX guidance on campus sexual assault in 2017?

Betsy DeVos followed up in 2020 with formal regulations, which bound schools more tightly than guidance letters and required colleges to hold live hearings.

What salutation gives its name to the 2011 federal letter on campus sexual violence and Title IX?

Dear Colleague letters carry less force than formal regulations, yet this one led schools to add staff and rewrite their procedures. Critics objected that it skipped public notice and comment.

Under Title IX's proportionality test, women's share of a school's athletes should mirror what?

Enrollment is the yardstick for the first of three alternative tests. A school can also comply by showing a history of expanding women's sports or by fully meeting women's interest.

Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools in 1992 first let Title IX plaintiffs win what from schools?

Money damages raised the stakes. Before the unanimous ruling, the most a court could do was order a school to stop discriminating.

Geraldine Cannon won individuals the right to sue under Title IX in 1979 after a rejection from what?

Medical school age limits were the issue: Cannon was 39, and the University of Chicago said it turned away applicants over 30, a policy that weighed more heavily on women.

The Supreme Court's 2005 ruling for Alabama coach Roderick Jackson extended Title IX to cover what?

Retaliation counts as sex discrimination, the Court held 5-4. Jackson had been removed as a girls' coach after complaining that his team got worse funding and facilities than the boys.

Which former Arizona state senator wrote the Supreme Court's 1999 Title IX ruling on student harassment?

Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for a 5-4 majority that a school can be liable when it knowingly ignores one pupil's harassment of another. The case began with a fifth-grader.

Roughly how many girls played U.S. high school sports in the school year before Title IX passed?

About 300,000 girls played, against nearly 3.7 million boys, so girls were roughly 7 percent of high school athletes. By 2016-17 the girls' figure had grown more than tenfold.

Which federal agency, known by its initials, wrote the 1975 rules applying Title IX to school sports?

HEW, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, gave high schools and colleges three years to comply. Oversight passed to the new Department of Education in 1980.

Title IX's text exempts Boys State and Girls State, civics programs run by which organization?

American Legion programs have teenagers elect mock state governments in separate sessions for boys and girls, so Congress wrote them an exemption in 1976.

Which 2015 documentary follows students who filed Title IX complaints over campus sexual assault?

The Hunting Ground centers on two former University of North Carolina students whose use of Title IX became a model for others. It made the Oscar documentary shortlist but not the final five.

Which campus crime law, named for a murdered Lehigh student, is often cited alongside Title IX?

The Clery Act honors Jeanne Clery, a 19-year-old killed in her residence hall in 1986. It requires colleges that take federal student aid to publish their campus crime statistics.

Which tiny women's college near Philadelphia won three straight national basketball titles from 1972?

Immaculata's Mighty Macs won it all in 1972, the year Title IX became law. In 1975 they played in the first nationally televised women's college game.

Which Oregon congresswoman, nicknamed Mrs. Education, held the 1970 hearings that led to Title IX?

Edith Green had been pressing for women's equality at work since 1955, when she first proposed the Equal Pay Act.

Which legal scholar advised the Yale students who first used Title IX against sexual harassment?

Catharine MacKinnon had just graduated from Yale Law School. The students lost in court, but Yale set up a grievance procedure and the judge accepted that harassment can be sex discrimination.

Which U.S. soccer captain refused to sign the report of a 2002 federal commission on Title IX?

Julie Foudy and Olympic swimmer Donna de Varona said the report played down persistent discrimination in school athletics, so they filed their own minority report instead.

Which former Wimbledon champion lost the 1973 Battle of the Sexes match, a year after Title IX passed?

Bobby Riggs, then 55, lost in straight sets before an estimated 90 million television viewers worldwide.

Which Delta State star of Title IX's first years is the only woman officially drafted by an NBA team?

Lusia Harris was picked by the New Orleans Jazz in 1977 and declined to try out. A year earlier she had scored the first points in Olympic women's basketball.