Freedom of Speech- Another casualty of Title IX

In her article in The Daily Beast , How Title IX Killed Free Speech On Campus, Lizzie Crocker highlights another example of egregious regulatory misapplication of Title IX.

A new report by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), “The History, Uses, and Abuses of Title IX” argues that “Overly Broad Definitions of ‘Hostile Environment’ Increasingly Undermine Academic Freedom.”

Similar problems have existed for years with the definition of ‘Gender Equity’ in sports. The American Sports Council maintains that the Title IX regulations which govern intercollegiate sports actually deny male students equal protection of the law.

Under the guise of pursuing ‘gender equity,’ schools discriminate on the basis of gender, which is contrary to the the language of the law. Established by the U.S. Congress in 1972, Title IX states that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance…”

However, male students are frequently and widely denied the benefits of participation in sports solely on the basis of their gender when schools create roster limits on male teams and eliminate male teams in order to comply with Title IX’s proportionality standard, which is a gender quota.

The AAUP report further alleges that “protections of academic freedom and free speech seem to have been relegated to the background or ignored completely.”

Now that college professors and administrators have experienced first hand the dangers of Title IX’s regulatory overreach, maybe they will support comprehensive reform of Title IX. In the meantime, the U.S. Department of Education continues its enforcement policies that circumvent the U.S. Constitution and steamroll the individual rights of students. Now their callous attitude of ‘to hell with the boys’ has expanded to ‘to hell with freedom of speech.’