Fair Play for Women proposed

Three U.S. Congresswomen and a senator proposed the Fair Play for Women Act to address ongoing inequities in school athletics 50 years after Title IX outlawed such discrimination. The legislation would make a number of significant changes. In a nutshell: It gives the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights a new enforcement tool besides the “nuclear option” of withholding all federal funds from a school that’s violating Title IX — a punishment so severe it’s never been used. The Fair Play for Women Act would allow the government to fine schools who discriminate in athletics. Elementary and high schools […]

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Schools ignore Title IX with impunity

Many schools ignore Title IX with impunity, a stellar investigation by USA Today found. In the final installment of its 2022 series of investigations for Title IX’s 50th anniversary, USA Today reported on its year-long study of letters and agreements between the federal Office for Civil Rights and universities in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. (An aside: USA Today deserves a Pulitzer for this series, imho.) Schools that practice sex discrimination have little to fear from the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is charged with enforcing Title IX and other civil rights laws. Too many universities brashly […]

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Title IX showdown on abortion

A recent Supreme Court ruling clashed with existing laws, producing a Title IX showdown on abortion of sorts in schools, colleges, and universities. The U.S. Department of Education reminded educational institutions that Title IX protects students, faculty, and staff against discrimination based on pregnancy and related conditions, including the termination of pregnancy. Officials released the three-page fact sheet 100 days after the Supreme Court canceled the constitutional right to an abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in a ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Title IX has protected abortion as an integral part […]

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Comments on Title IX regulations hit record

People and organizations submitted a record number of comments on Title IX regulations proposed by the Biden Administration. The Department of Education will review 240,085 comments received by the September 12 deadline before taking its next steps to revise Title IX’s regulations. The surge in interest continues a trend in Title IX history. Before the Department of Education proposed the first Title IX regulations in 1974 to combat sex discrimination in education, notices of proposed regulations to implement laws might draw 10 comments, or maybe 400 for more controversial proposals. The draft Title IX regulations generated nearly 10,000 comments, an […]

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Women’s Equality Day includes education

Women’s Equality Day on August 26 includes the struggle for equity in education, which handily illustrates how movements for various aspects of women’s rights are never really separate from each other. On that date in 1920, U.S. women won the right to vote, though racism limited access to voting mainly to white women for the following 44 years until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Author and activist Betty Friedan surprised her feminist allies in 1970 by calling for a Women’s Strike for Equality, urging women to pour into the streets on August 26. And they did all […]

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Congress mandates surveys on sexual violence

Once again the federal Education Department is stepping in to do something that all colleges should have done but many haven’t — surveys about sexual violence on campus. Hooray for the feds. Under a provision tucked into a 3,000-page Congressional bill to fund the federal government for six months, the Education Department will develop an online survey to measure students’ experiences with sexual harassment and assault, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Any college receiving federal funds will be required to conduct the campus-climate survey every two years, and the Education Department will publish aggregate results. The legislation also calls […]

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Burnout troubling Title IX coordinators

Regulations imposed by former President Donald Trump and his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos worsened an already high level of burnout among Title IX coordinators in schools, districts, and higher education. One of the 2020 rules from DeVos required live hearings, which made the investigation and resolution of sex discrimination complaints more like courtrooms than civil proceedings. That increased the workload and slowed the whole process down. TNG, a consulting company, expected this might slow down a Title IX case by two to four weeks but they’re seeing delays of two or more months, a recent report noted. In some schools, […]

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Speak your mind on DeVos and Title IX

We’re at a pivotal moment in Title IX history. Not since 1975 has the Department of Education changed the regulations governing Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in education. The Trump Administration now is going all-out to see that its definition of sex discrimination becomes the law of the land and to limit how schools are allowed to respond to it. Women’s advocates are fighting back, but Education Secretary Betsy DeVos gave the public only until Jan. 29, 2019 to submit comments for or against her new Title IX rules. Groups like Know Your IX, End Rape on […]

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Title IX advocates sue federal government

It looks like a coalition of advocates for Title IX may get to take the Trump Administration to court. (Video: Lawyers and a student survivor of sexual assault explain their case at a press conference.) A federal magistrate judge at a hearing in San Francisco seemed inclined to let a lawsuit proceed against the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IX policy but she asked lawyers for both sides to submit more arguments before she decides. The government had moved to dismiss the suit and plaintiffs opposed that motion, which the judge will decide. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley vigorously questioned attorneys […]

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