Law Commons^™

A Strategic Legal Challenge To The Unforeseen Anticompetitive And Racially Discriminatory Effects Of Baseball’S North American Draft, Stephen F. Ross, Michael James Jr.

Journal Articles

Major League Baseball (MLB) has honored a single player by retiring his number for every club. Absent special commemorations, no player will wear the number “42” in honor of the man who broke the color barrier to become the first African American to play major league baseball in the modern era: Jackie Robinson. MLB has also honored a single player—chosen from nominees from each individual club—by presenting an annual award for humanitarian service in his name; that honoree is Roberto Clemente. However, the sad reality is that if a fifteen-year-old Jackie Robinson were growing up today in South Pasadena, California, …

Discrimination Inward And Upward: Lessons On Law And Social Inequality From The Troubling Case Of Women Coaches, Deborah L. Brake

Articles

In the Title IX success story, women’s opportunities in coaching jobs have not kept pace with the striking gains made by female athletes. Women’s share of jobs coaching female athletes has declined substantially in the years since the law was enacted, moving from more than 90% to below 43% today. As a case study, the situation of women coaches contains important lessons about the ability of discrimination law to promote social equality. This article highlights one feature of bias against women coaches — gender bias by female athletes — as a counter-paradigm that presents a challenge to the dominant frame …

How The Expressive Power Of Title Ix Dilutes Its Promise, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

Title IX is widely credited with shaping new norms for the world of sports by requiring educational institutions to provide equal athletic opportunities to women. The statute and regulations send a message that women are entitled to participate in sports on terms equal to men. For several decades, this message of equality produced dramatic results in participation rates, as the number of women interested in athletics grew substantially. Despite these gains, however, many women and girls, especially those of color and lower socio-economic status, still do not participate in sports, or remain interested in participating, in numbers comparable to their …

The Twelve-Year-Old Girl's Lawsuit That Changed America: The Continuing Impact Of Now V. Little League Baseball, Inc. At 40, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

In 1972, Little League's national office forced 12-year-old Maria Pepe off her Hoboken (N.J.) team because "[g]irls are not eligible." The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights sustained her gender discrimination claim in 1973, and the courts upheld the administrative decision a year later.

National reaction to Maria Pepe's courageous insistence on gender equity helped sustain the evolution in gender roles that had accelerated since the Women's Movement of the 1960s. Her landmark legal action also likely influenced the Supreme Court's gradual movement toward intermediate scrutiny of gender discrimination claims; the 1975 federal regulations that assured Title IX of the …

Ncaa Transgender Student-Athlete 'Policy': Analysis, Shawn Crincoli

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

The Iaaf Hyperandrogenism Regulations And Discrimination, Shawn Crincoli

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Not Just One Of The Boys: A Post-Feminist Critique Of Title Ix's Vision For Gender Equity In Sports, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

Title IX as applied to athletics is a high-profile, controversial public policy effort that has opened up the world of athletics to millions of girls and women. Yet as it is both celebrated for the opportunities it has created for women, and decried as going too far at the expense of men, a reality persists that women do not pursue or remain committed to sport in numbers comparable to men. This Article seeks to explore this phenomenon by moving the discourse beyond the debate over whether women are inherently as "interested" in sport as men to examine the conception of …

The Heart Of The Game: Putting Race And Educational Equity At The Center Of Title Ix, Deborah L. Brake, Verna L. Williams

Articles

This article examines how race and educational equity issues shape women's sports experiences, building upon the narrative of Darnellia Russell, a high school basketball player profiled in the documentary The Heart of the Game. Darnellia is a star player who, because of an unintended pregnancy, has to fight to play the game she loves.

This girl's story provides a unique and underutilized lens through which to examine gender and athletics, as well as evaluate the legal framework for gender equality in sport. In focusing on this narrative, we seek to give voice to black female athletes and to express their …

Friday Night Lite: How De-Racialization In The Motion Picture Friday Night Lights Disserves The Movement To Eradicate Racial Discrimination From American Sport, N. Jeremi Duru

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Fielding A Team For The Fans: The Societal Consequences And Title Vii Implications Of Race-Considered Roster Construction In Professional Sport, N. Jeremi Duru

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Professional sports organizations' relationships with their players are, like other employer-employee relationships, subject to scrutiny under the antidiscrimination mandates embedded in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Professional sports organizations are, however, unique among employers in many respects. Most notably, unlike other employers, professional sports organizations attract avid supporters who identify deeply with the teams and their players. To the extent an organization racially discriminates, therefore, such discrimination creates the risk that fans will identify with the homogenous or racially disproportionate roster that results. The consequences of such race-based team identification are wide-reaching and potentially tragic. Through …