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In 1896, in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the Supreme Court held that racial segregation was allowable as long as facilities provided for blacks were deemed equal. But in 1954, the Supreme Court reversed that ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring that separate facilities are inherently not equal. Ten years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based not only on color, but on religion, sex, or national origin.
Later, Senator Birch Bayh penned an amendment to the Higher Education Act, adding Title IX to the Civil Rights Act to ensure any education facility receiving federal funds did not discriminate. The change passed in 1972. So now the prohibition against separate but equal treatment applied to schools.
Then came a battle over women’s treatment regarding college sports. Over several years and debates, the accepted interpretation of Title IX for this arena was very much different than the other anti-discrimination requirements it imposed. It allowed ‘separate but equal’ sports opportunities for women. It was patently obvious that requiring 50% of the slots on sports be earmarked for women would not work: women would be seriously injured playing on, say, the Alabama football team. They knew that back in the 70s. They knew that this was inherent in the physical differences between men and women. They knew that there was a biological difference between the sexes.
And so the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights established a set of guidelines that schools must follow. Essentially, a school was required to offer an equal number of participation slots for men and women, and had to provide 50% of its scholarship money to women. (There were other rules about participation rates and efforts to improve imbalances, but those are not the issue here.)
Participation rates for women shot up. History.com reports:
In 1972, there were just over 300,000 women and girls playing college and high school sports in the United States. Female athletes received 2 percent of college athletic budgets, while athletic scholarships for women were virtually nonexistent.
By 2012, the 40th anniversary of Title IX’s passage, the number of girls participating in high school sports had risen tenfold, to more than 3 million. More than 190,000 were competing in intercollegiate sports – six times as many as in 1972.
It was obvious that ‘separate but equal’ opportunities for women was a success. It was obvious that co-ed schools were good, but co-ed sports must be reserved for only a select number of non-contact sports. This was a noble change made to give women opportunities while recognizing realistic limitations.
But then along comes people who exhibit the physical characteristics of men – including not only genitals, but size, speed, strength – who decide that they identify as women and want to play sports on their teams. And suddenly, the entire scheme changed. Left-wing activists, including the heads of many colleges and universities, as well as high schools allowed these intrusions. In fact, the NCAA allowed it. But there is no need to spell out the insanity that has ensued: the reader sees this in the news every day.
So what this article intends to do instead is to raise the logical counter argument to the left’s insistence on opportunities for transgender people on sports teams. This is a simple formula: Title IX was designed to protect women because of physical differences – differences that could lead to serious injury if the application to sports had been a co-ed mandate, as it was applied for academics and employment.
Title IX created a special ‘separate but equal’ protection in recognition of an inherent biological truth. It’s time that the people of the education world do the same.
