Title IX is a 1972 federal law prohibiting gender-based discrimination at all colleges and universities that receive federal funding (the majority of schools in this nation). Title IX encompasses admissions, sports, and pregnancy/parenting. In reality, however, the most common complaints are for sexual harassment or sexual violence.

To tackle these common complaints, schools have to designate a Title IX Coordinator, support students who report an incident through measures such as counseling, no-contact orders, or class changes, and conduct an investigation and hearing process for both parties involved.

Exactly how that process plays out has shifted more than once in the past few years, and it’s still not settled. More on that below.

What are the Core Principles of Title IX?

Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs receiving federal funding. This includes any private or public college that receives any federal funding and extends to all aspects of a student’s college experience, from admissions to athletics to financial aid to discipline. Ensures equal opportunity regardless of sex. A school cannot arrange its programs, resources or opportunities (such as admissions to sports scholarships or access to certain courses) in a way that discriminates between boys and girls and must treat all pupils of both sexes equally in its arrangements and treatment.

Scope and Application of Title IX

Title IX applies to any educational institution that receives federal funding, public or private. That covers a wider range of organizations than most people expect:

  1. Local school districts (approximately 17,600): All public kindergarten through grade-12 districts in the country
  2. Postsecondary institutions (more than 5,000): Public and private colleges and universities that receive federal funds
  3. Charter schools: Publicly funded but independently run
  4. For-profit schools: Career and for-profit colleges that receive federal student aid
  5. Libraries: Covered if they’re funded by federal dollars and operate education programs
  6. Museums: Covered under the same federal funding and education-program criteria
  7. Vocational rehabilitation agencies: State and local agencies in charge of job training
  8. Education agencies: State and intermediate agencies responsible for federally funded programs

Key Areas Covered

Title IX reaches into nearly every corner of how a school runs, from athletic budgets to hiring decisions. Here’s where it applies:

  1. Athletics: Schools must provide equal opportunities and treatment to both sexes in sports.
  2. Course offerings: No student can be steered away from (or into) a class because of their sex.
  3. Counseling and materials: Guidance materials can’t lean on sex-based stereotypes.
  4. Financial assistance: Scholarships and aid get awarded without regard to sex.
  5. Health and insurance benefits: Coverage and services have to be equal for both sexes.
  6. Housing: Residential facilities and housing policies can’t discriminate.
  7. Marital and parental status: A student can’t be penalized or shut out for being married, pregnant, or a parent.
  8. Physical education: PE must be open to all students, regardless of sex.
  9. Educational programs and activities: No program or activity may operate on a sex-discriminatory basis.
  10. Employment: Hiring and personnel decisions must remain free of sex discrimination.

Forms of Sex Discrimination Prohibited Under Title IX

Title IX covers more than harassment complaints. It reaches into nine distinct forms of discrimination, from outright exclusion to retaliation against someone who files a complaint. Here’s how each one works.

Explicit Discrimination

Explicit discrimination under Title IX shows up in three main ways:

  • Exclusion from participation: This means refusing to let a qualified student join a course, team, class, or activity offered to the other sex
  • Denial of benefits: Examples include withholding a scholarship, facility access, or academic support because of a student’s sex
  • Subjection to discrimination: Any other unfair treatment based on sex, such as unequal discipline or differential grading

Sex-Based Harassment

As per the current 2020 guidelines, sex-based harassment is defined as offensive, severe, and pervasive sex-based conduct that creates an intimidating, hostile, or abusive climate for a person that interferes with the person’s ability to participate in the school education program. It includes three types of harassment: quid pro quo harassment, hostile environment harassment, and specific types such as sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking.

Sexual Violence

Sexual violence counts as a specific type of sex-based harassment under Title IX, with two key differences from other harassment claims:

  • Schools don’t need to separately prove the conduct was “severe or pervasive” enough to place a real educational burden on the student
  • Once notified, schools must support the reporting student and investigate through their formal grievance procedure

Pregnancy Discrimination

Schools are barred from discriminating against or penalizing students because of pregnancy, childbirth, or medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth. Schools shall not prohibit a student from participating in classes, activities, or programs because of pregnancy or parenting, and shall make reasonable accommodations, such as allowing excused absences for medical appointments, recovery, and related needs, without requiring a student to leave school or participate in an alternative program.

Unequal Athletic Opportunity

Under Title IX, schools must provide equal athletic opportunities to boys and girls, which is judged based on team size and availability, team equipment and facilities, team schedules, coaching, and training and medical services available to the team. Of course, this is not the same level of spending on each team, but it is a similar overall opportunity and treatment in men’s and women’s athletics programs.

STEM Discrimination

Title IX also covers bias in STEM courses and programs. Schools can’t structure science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) curricula in ways that discourage or put students at a disadvantage based on sex, whether through course access, teacher expectations, or resource allocation.

Discriminatory Dress Codes

Title IX bans dress code policies that are enforced more strictly against one sex, or that single out what’s considered “typical” dress for one sex but not the other. Two things to know:

  • A policy doesn’t have to name a sex directly to violate this rule
  • Even language that reads as neutral can count as discrimination if it’s applied unevenly in practice

Retaliation

Under Title IX, a person may not be penalized, intimidated, or otherwise subjected to adverse action by any school or school system on the basis of his or her report of a violation, filing of a complaint, or participation in an investigation conducted under this Policy, as a complainant, respondent, or witness. Retaliation is considered a separate violation of Title IX that is distinct from and beyond the underlying complaint.

Gender Identity and Expression

Whether gender identity is protected under Title IX is still legally unsettled:

  • The 2020 rules do not list gender identity as a protected category.
  • The 2024 regulations expanded protections to include gender identity
  • A 2025 court ruling struck down that expansion, leaving schools to go back under the 2020 standard on this issue
  • Some state laws and individual court rulings treat gender identity differently regardless of the federal standard

Sex-stereotyping claims are a separate, more established category. These involve penalizing a student for not conforming to expected notions of masculinity or femininity, and courts have recognized this kind of claim under Title IX for much longer than gender identity claims specifically.

Hostile Environment

A hostile environment occurs when certain conditions make it difficult for an individual to gain from or contribute to a work opportunity and/or program opportunity. It occurs when unwelcome sexual activity is so serious, widespread, and objectionable as to interfere with the enjoyment of the education or employment with which the victim is involved. Schools are responsible for their response after receiving notice.

Quid Pro Quo Harassment

Quid pro quo harassment means when someone in a position of authority, like a professor, ties a benefit, like a grade or an opportunity, to a student’s submission to unwanted sexual conduct. Even a single instance like this is enough to violate Title IX rules. In order to prove or demonstrate this, students don’t need to show a pattern, but that a tangible, unfavorable outcome followed their refusal to go along with the advance.

Title IX and Athletics

Athletic programs have been subject to Title IX since 1972. Schools are required by law to follow the same guidelines for their athletic programs as for their academic programs, including how to measure compliance and how that affects scholarship money.

Application to Athletics Programs

Athletics programs are considered educational programs and activities. Therefore, athletics is a part of this umbrella, and the federal funding agencies require that schools apply the same nondiscrimination policies to athletics as they do to academics.

Compliance Assessment

Regulators evaluate athletic compliance at the program level, not sport by sport:

  • Compares a school’s overall men’s program to its overall women’s program
  • Allows wide differences in the number and type of sports offered to each gender
  • Requires total opportunities and treatment to come out roughly equal across the whole program

Financial Considerations

Schools don’t have to spend equal dollars on men’s and women’s sports overall. Scholarships are the one exception: that money has to be proportional to participation, not split evenly between programs.

Everything else hinges on equality of opportunity rather than equality of funding. Student-athletes are due the same level of service regardless of their gender, although the amount of money may vary by sport. For example, football will cost more to operate than basketball. The critical factor is that scholarship dollars will be proportional to the number of participants in each sport. Non-monetary aspects such as equipment, coaches, and facility availability should also remain similar or equitable for both men’s and women’s athletic teams.

Program Requirements

No program shall be identical for both genders, and each program must reflect the interests and the ability of each gender. The programs for each gender shall be provided the same level of service, facilities, supplies, etc.

Programs can be designed in various ways as long as they meet student interest and offer support that is equal between genders in the school.

Sport Exclusions

No sport is exempt from this analysis. Every sport a school offers counts toward its overall compliance picture, with no carve-outs for specific teams or programs.

Impact on Male Athletes

Title IX does not require that the number of opportunities for athletes of the “disadvantaged gender” be reduced; rather, it is intended to address the treatment of the “disadvantaged gender” to make it equal to that of the “advantaged gender.” The law is not made to reduce opportunities for one sex to increase opportunities for the other.

Title IX Enforcement and Compliance

Day-to-day compliance with Title IX is handled by schools, but it’s the federal government’s job to oversee and enforce the process. Let’s break down who and what.

Responsible Parties

Schools are responsible for implementing Title IX requirements on a day-to-day basis. OCR is the federal entity responsible for enforcing Title IX, conducting investigations when complaints are raised, and may revoke funds for failure to comply.

OCR Authority

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) shapes how Title IX is applied in real life on the ground. The OCR:

  • Formulates policy on the rules it administers, including interpretations like the Intercollegiate Athletics Policy Interpretation
  • Prepares guidance, such as the Title IX Athletics Investigator’s Manual, that schools use to build compliant policies

Complaint Process

Anyone may file an OCR complaint. The identity of the party who files the complaint is to be kept confidential. Complaints can be made by students, parents, and advocacy groups, and are not just complaints of the individual. Complaints are not limited to the complainant, and OCR generally keeps the complainant’s identity confidential throughout the process.

Institutional Compliance

Schools are required to have a designated point person, a Title IX coordinator, for Title IX issues who is easily accessible to anyone involved in a complaint of discrimination, conducts investigations of any complaints of discrimination, and ensures that the campus community is aware of whom to contact for any concerns regarding a violation of Title IX. It is the institution’s responsibility to inform its staff and students about the Title IX coordinator’s role.

Resources for Students

Depending on what the concern involves, students have several people they can go to beyond the Title IX coordinator:

  • Senior woman administrator
  • District director of athletics
  • District faculty athletics representative
  • Compliance coordinator
  • Legal counsel
  • Equal Employment Opportunities office

Determining Institutional Compliance

Students and families have two ways to check a school’s compliance:

  • They can ask directly by requesting compliance information from the school itself
  • They can also request a review of the EADA report. Schools must publish this annually under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, disclosing athletic participation and spending broken down by sex

Title IX Amendments and Evolution

As previously stated, Title IX regulations have shifted several times in recent years. Here’s a breakdown of what changed, and when.

2020 Modifications

The 2020 rules added due process protections for students/respondents, meaning the school assumes the student is innocent in all proceedings and that no action is taken against the respondent until a final adjudication has been made.

Proposed 2022 Amendments

The Biden administration proposed expanding Title IX protections in 2022, which included extending protections for transgender students against sexual violence, and protections for pregnant and parenting students. That proposal was finalized as a rule in 2024. However, in 2025, courts struck down gender-identity provisions, prompting schools to return to the 2020 rules on that specific issue.

Additional Considerations

Benefits for All Genders

Title IX benefits everyone, not just women and girls. It promotes educational equity and eliminates gender restrictions and barriers. Although often thought of as a right for women, Title IX prohibits discrimination against any student, including men, in predominantly male programs, such as nursing or elementary education.

Resources and Information

Official guidance on Title IX can be gained through:

  • The U.S. Department of Education website, which includes full regulations, guidance documents, and complaint procedures. This is the most valuable and official resource for students and families.
  • Families and students may also visit NCAA.org, which offers athletics-specific compliance resources for college sports programs

Save Your Future With K Altman Law:

Knowing what Title IX allows you to do is only half the challenge. You must have a plan in place to resist unfair treatment and/or respond to an investigation. This is where K Altman Law comes in. We assist students and families across the country in defending their rights. Don’t deal with the disciplinary system alone at your university when serious allegations are made or when your process has gone wrong. Contact us today and let us help you to protect your future.