Title IX rights expanded
on Mar 29, 2005 at 12:23 pm
The Supreme Court, splitting 5-4, on Tuesday significantly expanded the scope of protection against sex-based discrimination under Title IX of federal civil rights law.
The Court ruled that a teacher who is disciplined after complaining about sex discrimination against students has a legal right to bring a retaliation claim under Title IX. (Marty Lederman, in a post below, provides links to the majority and dissenting opinions in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, docket 02-1672.)
Overturning the Eleventh Circuit, the Court said that such a teacher has a private right to bring a lawsuit after complaining of sex bias — not against the teacher, but against the students — where the school system’s retaliation against the teacher was “an intentional response to the nature of the complaint” — that is, sex discrimination.
Title IX, the Court said in the opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, does not require that the victim of the retaliation also be the victim of the discrimination that the teacher had targeted.
“Teachers and coaches…are often in the best position to vindicate the rights of their students because they are better able to identify discrimination and bring it to the attention of administrators,” the Court majority said. “Indeed, sometimes adult employees are the only effective adversaries of discrimination in schools.”
