Supreme Court Upholds the Right to Eliminate a Men’s Program

The Supreme Court turned down an appeal by male swimmers who wanted the University of Illinois to reinstate their team, which was eliminated to save money although the school kept the women’s swim team.

The court, acting without comment Monday, turned down arguments by the men’s team members that they are the victims of reverse sex discrimination.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 bars sex bias in federally funded schools. Federal rules allow schools to have single-sex athletic teams but require “equal athletic opportunity” for both sexes.

In 1982, the federal Education Department said Illinois denied equal athletic opportunity to female students, but found no violation of Title IX so long as the school remedied the situation.

By 1993, women made up 44% of the student body but 23.4% of its intercollegiate athletes.

Facing a major athletic-budget deficit in 1993, university officials dropped four teams--men’s swimming, men’s fencing, and men’s and women’s diving. The women’s swimming team was kept so the school could avoid violating Title IX.

Members of the men’s swim team sued. A federal judge ruled for the university, as did the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. There is no requirement for parallel teams, the appeals court said, noting that football is not offered for women.

Schools may consider gender in deciding which athletic teams to cut so that “in instances where overall athletic opportunities decrease, the actual opportunities available to the under-represented gender do not,” the 7th Circuit court said.