Back to Title IX Brainlessness

The Obama Administration makes it easier to sue colleges that don't have the same number of male and female varsity athletes.

It will once again put the emphasis for Title IX compliance on the proportionality prong of the policy’s three-part test. Technically, there are supposed to be three ways for a school to comply with Title IX. However, since the Cohen v. Brown ruling in 1995, the courts and federal bureaucrats have made clear to schools that when it comes to the threat of Title IX litigation, only the proportionality test will give them a safe harbor.

The 2005 Bush policy clarification addressed this problem by offering, for the first time, an official survey method for schools to measure student interest in sports. Although it didn’t go so far as to require schools to survey all students, just those of the “underrepresented” gender (women), it still constituted a step towards fairer and more reasonable regulations, by letting institutions show that female students were participating in sports in proportion to their expressed interest in doing so. But the method was labeled a “loophole” by its detractors. Apparently, asking students what they want is too much information for the likes of the Obama administration and its friends at the NCAA.

In other words, the Obama Team doesn't care whether women express less interest playing varsity sports than men at the same school. If that happens, its the school's fault for not raising women's sports consciousness to the government approved level.