TITLE OF ARTICLE :

TITLE IX: AN EXCITABLE PROCESS THAT HAS OVERREACHING COMPLICATIONS

AUTHOR(S) OF ARTICLE: Damion P. Jones

 1964 was a precarious time in the United States. The Honorable Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had just been assassinated in the closing days of 1963. The philosophies of the Nation of Islam, guided and disseminated to the public by the Honorable Malcolm X, was taking hold in black households and communities all over America. Civil unrest was on the mind of nearly every black American, which materialized in race riots all over southern and midwestern cities in America. Finally, the United States realized it had a serious problem on its hands. 

With the passing of legislation titled the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the United States of America attempted to move beyond its troubled past with racism and its illegal treatment of those individuals on the fringes of society, and thus most deserving of the protections guaranteed to all American citizens under the Constitution. 

The introduction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly prohibited the discrimination of any citizen solely on the basis of []. Cite. In addition to banning discrimination based on these traits, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed for the creation of Title IX – America wanted to prevent any form of discrimination against all individuals based on gender at college campuses, too. 

The ramifications more than fifty years later have been catastrophic. Stare decisis expanded gender discrimination to cover sexual assault and abuse on college campuses. While this is an extraordinary ideal, the remaining legislation dropped the ball, by imposing excessively low burdens of proof, the allowance of bias to interfere in the fact-finding process, culminating in the deprivation of rights guaranteed at birth. The result is a quasi-judicial system without all of the guarantees of the American judicial system of justice. This article explores the history of Title IX, its progeny in the form of the 2001 Dear Colleague Letter, its offspring – the 2011 Dear Colleague Letter, as well as the body of case law that has shaped the system as we know it today. 

In addition, this article offers a study on the documented but largely unknown application of Title IX and its mutations in the form of the 2001 and 2011 DCLs, as well as some alternatives.