A core function of the Department of Education (USDOE) is upholding Title IX of the Education Amendments, a gender-equity provision that declares that no person 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.”Footnote ¹ Title IX, passed in 1972 but updated periodically, preceded creation of the USDOE in 1979; initial responsibility rested with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Once the USDOE was created, it assumed responsibility for interpreting and enforcing the law’s provisions through a combination of regulations, compliance reviews, formal investigations, and “Dear Colleague” letters that inform constituents of the Department’s approaches.

Over its fifty-three-year history, interpretation and implementation of Title IX have consistently resembled a political football—a fitting metaphor given that concerns about the legislation’s impact on male sports threatened its early derailment. Politically, Title IX enforcement has shifted with presidential administrations, depending on their progressive or conservative leanings. For instance, Republicans like Ronald Reagan were slow to act on complaints, conduct investigations, or fund staff; while Democrats like Jimmy Carter were more active, but not always thoroughly energized about Title IX protections. Most recently, Democrat Joe Biden took a progressive stance, pushing to expand protections regarding gender identity, while conservative Republican Donald Trump (in both his first and second terms) worked to diminish its power and reach, and continues to do so. If the USDOE is dismantled, the federal agency charged with addressing the gender-based educational equity requirements of Title IX will be lost, as will the likelihood that other parts of the government will assume that role with vigor or commitment.

Over five decades, Title IX has expanded its reach across varied areas of higher education. The legislation has sequentially developed four main applications: collegiate admissions and staffing; athletics; sexual violence and misconduct; and gender identity. Public advocacy, feminist networking, presidential impetus, and USDOE interpretation have all contributed to alternately enhancing or slowing administration attention to these issues.Footnote ²

Often assumed to have started as a law to ensure equity in athletics, Title IX actually first addressed collegiate employment and admissions. Advocates in the late 1960s cited rampant sex discrimination in recruitment, hiring, and promotion of collegiate staff and faculty, as well as formal and informal gender quotas in collegiate admissions. Yet, gaps occurred in extant laws to address these issues. The Civil Rights Act’s Title VI, for instance, did not consider sex discrimination; and its Title VII did not cover professionals in educational institutions. Key advocate Bernice Sandler, working with the Women’s Equity Action League, compiled complaints and instances of discrimination from across the country. At that time, the US Office of Education did not gather statistics by sex, so Sandler’s files became a resource for national challenges, eventually resulting in complaints against more than 250 colleges and universities by 1970. Sandler and others, including Catherine East of the US Women’s Bureau, worked with congressional leaders Edith Green and Birch Bayh to gain passage of the new law that would specifically address discrimination in collegiate (and school) settings, and, generally, ensure equity for women in higher education.Footnote ³

Once passed, the creation of implementation regulations took a full three years’ work by HEW’s Office for Civil Rights. During the drafting, advocates began to argue for a tool to tackle gender discrimination in collegiate and school sports, where women’s and girls’ teams experienced low participation, inequitable funding, and poor facilities and equipment. In 1971-72, for example, only thirty thousand women participated in college athletics, just 15 percent of all female collegians.Footnote ⁴ Equity in athletics quickly became Title IX’s second focus. Recognition—followed by alarm—about how Title IX might affect athletics was slow to develop, but once raised, heavy lobbying occurred by coaches’ groups and university athletic departments, who argued that men’s athletics would be decimated by supposed requirements for equal expenditures for male and female sports. Implications for football, a male-only sport that was expensive but also lucrative financially and reputationally for many campuses, created the biggest stir. The NCAA sued, pushing OCR to develop options for meeting the law’s demands without destroying male sports. Repeatedly noting that Title IX did not mandate quotas or even “equal expenditures,” OCR created a three-part test to determine compliance: (1) proportionality (athletic participation opportunities proportionally match enrollment by gender); (2) history (the institution can show a continuing practice of expanding opportunity); or (3) effective accommodation (the program demonstrably meets the interests and abilities of the underrepresented gender).Footnote ⁵ Arguably, athletics has remained the longest-lasting focus of Title IX, with ongoing campus-by-campus determinations of equity in participation, facilities, and funding.

Just as early concerns about inequities in hiring and then athletics enhanced Title IX as a tool, the post-2000 rise in awareness about sexual misconduct and violence on campuses resulted in the law’s third expansion. Applying Title IX to campus sexual harassment began with the court case Alexander v. Yale. Filed in 1977, the lawsuit was the first to argue that harassed students were denied a collegiate education equal to that offered to others.Footnote ⁶ Over time, attention grew regarding the prevalence of sexual violence; one study, for example, found that in 2009, “colleges and universities reported 3,300 forcible sex offenses,” further noting that “only 4-8 percent of sexually assaulted college students reported it to campus officials.”Footnote ⁷ A major expansion occurred in 2011, when the USDOE issued a “Dear Colleague” letter that pushed campuses toward looser definitions of sexual violence and greater protections for accusers. The letter prompted new roles for campus Title IX coordinators, clearer disciplinary procedures, and greater protections for students (or staff) bringing complaints of harassment or violence. At the same time, these efforts marked a significant swing of the pendulum, as many perceived undue favoritism toward accusers that led to a lack of fairness and due process for persons accused. In 2017, Donald Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos, rescinded the 2011 Obama-era guidance. Sexual misconduct represents a key indicator of the differences between progressive and conservative administrative application.

The fourth and most recent application of Title IX concerned gender identity, with the Biden administration arguing that the term sex in the original legislation should be interpreted as encompassing gender identity and gender expression. For Biden’s USDOE, this resulted in increasing Title IX protections for transgender and gender-nonconforming students. However, the Trump administration, via its Executive Order 14168, posits that sex is only defined by a male/female binary, and as a consequence, the government no longer recognizes federal protections for transgender individuals.Footnote ⁸

Title IX has developed into a singularly powerful tool for enhancing gender equity. Since 1979, the USDOE has held responsibility for upholding its provisions on college campuses. Even so, the USDOE’s role has veered between progressive champion and disengaged monitor, according to prevailing political winds. Yet, without the USDOE, responsibility for—and attention to—Title IX would likely splinter among various agencies, none of which has had historical responsibility for collegiate gender equity.