Jessica Gavora had a fabulous article over at NRO last week about how we must not allow Title IX’s gender Quotas to enter our nation’s high schools. Here’s the situation:
“Title IX – the good parts, that is – has long and rightly been enforced in high schools. The law has protected high-school girls’ right to equal athletic facilities with boys, their right to equivalent practice times and all the other uncontroversial indices of equality before the law.
“But the question of what constitutes sex discrimination under Title IX when it comes to participation in high-school sports has never been answered. And now the same coalition of activists, bureaucrats, and trial lawyers that brought us Title IX quotas in intercollegiate athletics is turning its attention to interscholastic athletics. And their version of what constitutes discrimination under Title IX is very specific and very narrow – anything less equal rates of participation by the sexes in athletics, even if that equality has to be achieved by limiting opportunities for boys.”
And of all things, proponents are using obesity to push for quotas:
“…Title IX quota advocates are now using the catch-all excuse of the so-called “epidemic of obesity” as their rationale for forcing teenage boys out of the chance to play lacrosse. Their message: ‘Get your girls involved in sports; their lives depend on it!'”
So what exactly is the quota brigade pushing for?:
“At the center of the pro-quota activists’ marching orders for Congress today is something called the “High School Sports Information Collection Act.” It’s modeled after the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act (EADA), which for a dozen years has forced colleges and universities to annually report their athletic participation and expenses – broken down by sex – to the feds. The EADA was meant to be, and is, a one-stop-shopping list for trial lawyers and activist groups looking for schools to sue for failing to meet the Title IX quota. Now, courtesy of Senators Olympia Snowe and Patty Murray, they are about to have the same litigation hit list of high schools.”
We’ve seen the deleterious effects of Title IX at the university level and now we must stop the strict gender quotas from trickling down to the high school level. The problem is getting politicians to stand up to against harmful quotas. That is easier said than done. Nevertheless, the College Sports Council and Pacific Legal Foundation are trying. Last week they called on the Department of Education to clarify how Title IX is to be enforced at the high school level:
“‘The Department of Education has an obligation to provide clear and unambiguous guidelines for Title IX compliance at the scholastic level. Their failure to act will allow gender quota advocates to advance their own version of Title IX compliance,’ said Eric Pearson, Chairman of the CSC. ‘If proportionality would be applied today at the High School level, you’d have to eliminate over one million boys from teams to get a 50/50 gender ratio, and nobody wants to see that happen. It would create the largest quota system ever imposed by government in the United States.'”
More details here.