Gregory (Greg) Keating and Joanita Gakami, attorneys in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, co-authored an article in Westlaw Today, titled “The Expanding Breadth and Reach of Title IX.”
Following is an excerpt:
Epstein Becker Green attorneys Greg Keating and Joanita Gakami review the expanding scope of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 through regulations and litigation.
Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) into law. What began as an effort to level playing fields in the contexts of academic and athletic opportunity has since shifted dramatically.
In recent decades, enforcement of Title IX, a civil statute, has emphasized sexual harassment and the crime of sexual assault, largely governed by numerous guidance documents issued by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR). A backlash against governance through agency policy, described by some as an overreach by the Executive Branch, led to formal rulemaking, resulting in a significant and controversial expansion of the regulations implementing Title IX, effectuated in 2020 as "the Final Rule."
Countering, the Biden Administration released proposed amendments to the regulations, which received over 235,000 remarks by the close of a public comment period that ended on September 12, 2022.
