by Neena Chaudhry, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

Many of us here had the privilege of attending an inspiring event yesterday at George Washington University, where hundreds gathered to celebrate the release of a new Title IX guidance that reversed a harmful policy issued in 2005 and provided further details about how schools can comply with the law. The 2005 policy weakened the law by permitting schools to claim that they were complying with Title IX based exclusively on the results of an email survey asking female students about their interests in additional sports opportunities. Even worse, schools were given the green light to interpret any lack of response to a survey as lack of interest in sports.

Vice President Biden, Valerie Jarrett (Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls), and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his staff joined Olympic and professional athletes, local teams, students, parents and advocates to talk about the importance of Title IX and what it means for our nation’s daughters. As the Vice President said, “Making Title IX as strong as possible is a no-brainer.” And he dubbed yesterday Equal Play Day, noting that it was also Equal Pay Day (check out our blog for posts about fair pay).

The speakers recognized how empowering sports are for women and girls and how participating in sports leads to greater academic and employment success, better health outcomes, and countless other benefits.

Then came the policy briefing, where Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Russlynn Ali provided copies of and answered questions about the new policy, which provides schools with guidance on how to comply with part three of Title IX’s participation test. Under that test, schools can demonstrate compliance by showing that they are fully satisfying the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.

In the new policy, the Department of Education:

• Restores the law by requiring schools to evaluate multiple factors in order to show that they are fully accommodating female students’ interests and abilities;
• Provides guidance on the multiple indicators that should be evaluated to assess interest, ability and reasonable expectation of competition;
• Clarifies that schools may not rely on surveys alone and may not count non-responses as evidence of lack of interest;
• Details the factors that it considers when determining how often institutions must conduct assessments of interests and abilities; and
• Recommends that institutions have procedures for collecting, maintaining and analyzing information on the interests and abilities of students of the underrepresented sex.

Check out our fact sheet for more details.

With the new policy in place, the Department should focus on enforcing Title IX to address the many inequities that women and girls still face on the playing field.

View Original Post at womenstake.org

• Filed Under:  
• SportsPLUS, Discrimination/Title IX

• Tags:
• Title IX
• Athletics
• education
• Neena Chaudhry

This post is related to the following ongoing stories:

• Title IX and the Obama Administration