American Sports Council Reacts to Dismissal of Lawsuit Against DOE

On March 27, the District Court dismissed American Sports Council v. Department of Education based on standing.Eric Pearson, Chairman of the American Sports Council, reacts:

“It is unfortunate that the Court refused to hear the merits of our case, American Sports Council v Department of Education. The Court accepted the government’s objection to the ASC’s standing to bring this case on behalf of current and future high school student athletes. As a result, the Court did not consider our challenge to the legality of the DOE using gender quotas to enforce Title IX at the high school level.

Accordingly, justice has been denied to high school male athletes nationwide who have been and who will continue to be harmed by these unreasonable regulations. But we remain undeterred. The American Sports Council will continue to advocate for reforming Title IX regulations on behalf of the thousands of high school athletes who are denied equal protection under the law because of gender quota enforcement.

The language of the Title IX statute states that no person in the United States shall on the basis of their gender “be excluded from participation in, [or] denied the benefits of participation…” Unfortunately, Title IX’s Three-Part Test encourages schools to do just that- deny participation in sports on the basis of gender. The ASC will continue to campaign for reform of Title IX until the regulations are consistent with the language of the law.

The ASC would like to thank the Pacific Legal Foundation for supporting the Title IX reform cause through their pro-bono work on the case.”

Joshua Thompson, Staff Attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, also responds:

“This is really unfortunate news. The court held that American Sports Council (ASC) did not suffer any injury as a result of the Three-Part Test’s application to high schools. Accordingly, ASC does not have “standing” to have its claim adjudicated. So, instead of reaching the merits of ASC’s claim — whether the Three-Part Test can be constitutionally and statutorily applied to high schools – ASC was kicked out of court.

On its face, the Three-Part applies to intercollegiate athletics. Indeed, its actual title is, “A Policy Interpretation: Title IX and Intercollegiate Athletics.” It requires that colleges engage in sex-balancing by requiring institutions to have a proportional representation of male and female athletes at each school. While this alone is constitutionally troubling, the rub with this latest lawsuit is that sex-quota activists have been using the Three-Part Test to force sex-balancing on high schools. The law neither allows this nor was ever designed for this.”

To see the full Pacific Legal Foundation statement, click here.

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