Opening Statement

Jocelyn Samuels
National Women's Law Center

For 30 years, Title IX has protected and expanded women's and girls' educational opportunities, most visibly in athletics. On January 8, 2003, the Commission on Opportunities in Athletics will convene in Washington, D.C., and many of the members will make proposals to dismantle current Title IX athletics policies. This will have devastating consequences for the rights of women and girls across the nation, will conflict with basic requirements of Title IX, and will weaken the fundamental principles that underlie our nation's civil rights laws. Instead of approving the radical and destructive proposals currently on the table, the Commission should, as a whole, reaffirm that current Title IX policies are essential to enforcement of equal opportunity and must be maintained and more strongly enforced.

As many of you know, longstanding Title IX policies create a three-part test to measure whether schools are providing their male and female students with an equal opportunity to play sports. The three-part test provides that schools will be in compliance with Title IX in this regard if they show any one of the following: that (a) the percentages of male and female athletes are about the same as the percentages of full-time male and female students; or (b) the school has a history and continuing practice of expanding opportunities for women; or (c) the school is fully and effectively meeting its female students' interests and abilities, even if it does not provide equal sports opportunities.

Since its adoption more than 20 years ago, this three-part test has been attacked by those who claim that it constitutes reverse discrimination and diminishes opportunities for men. These claims ignore several critical facts.

First, opportunities for men overall have increased, not decreased, since Title IX was passed.

Second, every court to address the question - eight out of eight federal courts of appeals - has held that the policies are not discriminatory and do not create quotas. The use of this hot-button word is a polarizing tactic that plays upon Americans' deepest sensitivities; in reality, there is nothing in Title IX or its policies that requires that schools set aside a certain mandatory number of slots for women athletes. The very arguments raised by Title IX opponents before this Commission have been heard - and rejected - many times before.

Third, the policies are critical to continued progress toward equal opportunity. While women and girls have made great strides, the playing field is not yet any where near level for them. They face persistent inequities and discrimination in athletics at every educational level.

The attacks on the three-part test are premised on the notion that women are inherently less interested in sports than men. This is the kind of stereotyping that we should never accept as a basis for government decision making. As Professor Hogshead-Makar will tell you, it is both unlawful and inaccurate. Women are interested in obtaining the benefits of athletics participation and their rights to equal treatment, and will fight to ensure that laws and policies that protect those rights withstand