Abortion controversy altered Title IX history

The leaked draft Supreme Court decision that could cancel abortion rights dominated headlines this week, but earlier abortion controversy altered Title IX history in ways that are worth remembering. Read more about this in my article in The Washington Post Made by History section today.

Here’s a bit more detail to that story: When a 1984 Supreme Court decision in Grove City College v Bell narrowed the application of Title IX and other civil rights laws in education, enforcement stalled. Several colleges cut women’s sports teams because they no longer had to provide equal chances to play. The Office for Civil Rights dropped some investigations of sexual harassment and assault too.

Because Title IX’s first 37 words copied those in Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and then civil rights laws against discrimination based on disability or age did the same, the Supreme Court ruling weakened all those laws. Advocates for people of color, women, the aged, and people with disabilities together lobbied Congress to overturn the Grove ruling by passing the Civil Rights Restoration Act. They agreed not to try to improve on the civil rights laws in the bill, written by Marcia Greenberger and Margie Kohn at the National Women’s Law Center and Judith L. Lichtman, then of the Women’s Legal Defense Fund. They just tried to restore the conditions that preceded Grove and to oppose any hostile amendments.

From chapter seven in 37 Words: “Women’s advocates for years had fought off attempts to use the act to weaken Title IX by allowing schools to refuse to provide abortion services. The original 1975 regulations for Title IX required college campus health services to provide contraception and abortion services because that’s what then secretary of education Caspar Weinberger felt was required under the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v Wade that legalized abortion.” Conservative senators stalled the Civil Rights Restoration Act. By 1987, some of the bill’s backers agreed to an amendment in order to get the bill passed. Whether women’s advocates liked it or not, Congress would pass the act with wording allowing schools to refuse to provide abortion services.

Facing the inevitable, Greenberger and Lichtman worked night and day to get friendly legislators to insert wording offering some protections. Students could not be expelled, denied services, or otherwise discriminated against because they were pregnant or had an abortion. Congress passed the bill in 1988 and overrode President Reagan’s veto. 

Here’s one of the lessons learned that may apply to today’s struggles: “Greenberger never again accepted a strategy of just trying to regain a status quo in civil rights. Any compromise in that scenario would mean a loss of a previously protected right. Civil rights advocates must always try to push the envelope to expand rights, not just regain them, she urged anyone who would listen.”

Elsewhere

More high school girls play sports than ever before but they still get fewer opportunities to play than the number of boys in athletics in 1982, the year Title IX passed, according to a new report by the Women’s Sports Foundation, Fifty Years of Title IX: We’re Not Done Yet.

It’s behind a paywall, but the Chronicle of Higher Education reported the nuanced challenges facing the NCAA in figuring out how to include transgender athletes. Commentary in the New Hampshire Bulletin recounts our national history of exclusionary practices that now target transgender students. Meanwhile, a Georgia athletics association banned transgender athletes from playing on teams that match their gender identity.

When a student at Visible Music College, a Christian college in Memphis, Tenn. reported being choked and raped, the college threatened to expel her unless she confessed to breaking school rules against premarital sex. At least 23 people have sued Liberty University, Lynchburg, Tenn. for mishandling complaints of sexual misconduct and the Office for Civil Rights has launched an investigation. Eighty former students, mostly gay men, agreed to a confidential settlement with the University of Southern California to end lawsuits alleging sexual assault and harassment by a university physician.

School district officials put a North Kingstown, R.I. middle school coach on leave following complaints of sexual harassment and a cover-up by administrators. 

On the up side

The National Women’s Law Center, Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative, and Women’s Sports Foundation launched Demand IX, a joint effort asking people to sign a pledge to amplify demands for strong Title IX protections and enforcement. 

After months of student rallies at Seattle high schools demanding better policies against sexual harassment, the school board set a vote on new policies.

A judge ordered an Indiana middle school to comply with Title IX and let a transgender student use gender-appropriate bathrooms while a lawsuit over the issue continues. From Charlotte, S.C.comes a story of how a community rallied around a mother whose six-year-old kindergartner was being harassed and bullied by another student.

Hundreds of New York University students, staff, and faculty held an in-person protest, and university officials decided not to hire a scholar who had been booted from MIT and other institutions for sexual misconduct.

Where you’ll find me

May 12 — I’ll be in New York City for a preview reception of the new exhibit by the New York Historical Society, “Title IX: Activism On and Off the Field.” The exhibit opens on Friday, May 13 and will run until September 4. New Yorkers and visitors: Check it out! 

May 26, 6:30 p.m. PT — A virtual get-together with the Riverside, Calif. chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

June 9, 7 p.m. PT — Joine me and Lucy Jane Bledsoe, author of the new Young Adult novel No Stopping Us Now, at a virtual event hosted by Green Apple Books on the Park, San Francisco. 

June 22 — Lucy Jane Bledsoe and I will Zoom with residents of Rossmoor, Walnut Creek, Calif.

June 23, 3:00-4:30 p.m. ET — It’s Title IX’s 50th birthday! I’ll be Zooming with members of the Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) to celebrate. Read details here. And watch a 30-second promo video with moi here. 

I delighted that former Chancellor of the University of Illinois, Springfield Susan Koch wrote a glowing review of 37 Words in the Des Moines Register.

The Nation magazine published an excerpt from my chapter 5, which introduces Title IX’s application by the movement against sexual violence. The Washington Monthly gave 37 Words a fine review — check it out! The Wall Street Journal published a review of my book and I wrote a Letter to the Editor correcting some misinformation in that review.

My virtual fireside chat with Kenyora Parham, executive director of End Rape on Campus, gives a good overview of the book. Plus video clips of interviews with some of the book’s main characters!

The New York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History & Academic Affairs posted a discussion with me and some of the earliest Title IX activists, available on YouTube.

If you registered for the American Historical Association 2022 conference, you can watch a video that will be available through June of our panel session on “Fifty Years of Title IX: Evolutions in the Struggle Against Sex Discrimination in Education.”

The Washington, D.C. chapter of the National Organization for Women interviewed me on the DC NOW podcast.

Here’s a Facebook Live video of my book launch event at the Norwich Bookstore, though you may want to just listen instead of watch because the first four minutes are sideways. (Oops!) It’s still a wonderful discussion with Kate Rohdenburg of WISE.

Lastly, here are links to order your copy of my new book, 37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination (The New Press, 2022).

(Top photo: Women’s March 2017 by Larissa Puro and the University of Southern California’s Institute for Global Health, via Wikimedia Commons.)