Title IX and Retaliation

Facts of the Case

Roderick Jackson was hired as the physical education teacher and girls' basketball coach by the public school board in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1993. Jackson was transferred to a different school in 1999, where he discovered that the girls' basketball team did not receive equal funding or access to athletic equipment and facilities. The lack of funding and equipment caused Jackson significant difficulty in coaching the girls' basketball team. Jackson complained of this unequal treatment to his supervisor beginning in December 2000, but his complaints were unheeded. Rather, Jackson began to receive negative performance evaluations and his employment as coach was terminated in May 2001; he retained his job as a teacher.

Jackson filed suit in a federal trial court in Alabama alleging, among other issues, that the school board retaliated against him because of his complaints of gender inequity in violation of Title IX. However, the trial court dismissed Jackson's claim in declaring that Title IX's private right of action did not include retaliation claims. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed on the basis that the plaintiff failed to state a claim, because Title IX did not provide for a private right of action for retaliation. The court added that even if Title IX had prohibited retaliation, Jackson would not have been entitled to relief, because he was not a member of the protected class, namely females, under Title IX.

The Supreme Court's Ruling

The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in order to resolve the question of whether the private right of action under Title IX encompassed claims of retaliation for complaints of discrimination on the basis of sex. Writing for the majority in a five-to-four judgment, Justice O'Connor, writing for the Court, reversed in favor of Jackson.

At the outset of its analysis, the Supreme Court pointed out that in 1979, in Cannon v. University of Chicago, it had recognized that Title IX implies a private right of action to prohibit intentional discrimination on the basis of sex. The Court also noted that, over time, it had distilled the contours of this private right of action in other cases, indicating that it authorizes private parties to seek monetary damages for Title IX violations and that the private right of action encompasses intentional sex discrimination in the form of deliberate indifference to a teacher's sexual harassment of a student or to sexual harassment of a student by another student.

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