The battle over how far Title IX reaches inside America’s schools and universities is headed to the nation’s highest court.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to examine whether professors, coaches and other school employees can directly sue federally funded institutions for sex discrimination under Title IX — a question that has fractured federal appeals courts across the country.
At the center of the dispute are two former Georgia university employees: Thomas Crowther, an ex-art professor at Augusta University, and MaChelle Joseph, the longtime former women’s basketball coach at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Their lawsuits were thrown out by the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that Title IX does not provide employees with a standalone pathway to pursue workplace discrimination claims.
That decision placed the 11th Circuit alongside two other appeals courts taking the same position. But eight federal appeals courts have gone the other direction, allowing employees to sue under Title IX.
The Supreme Court’s review now sets the stage for a major ruling on the reach of the landmark 1972 education law.
Title IX bars sex discrimination in education programs receiving federal funds — covering nearly every public school, college and university in the United States. While the law is widely associated with athletics and student rights, it has also been used in employment-related disputes inside academic institutions.
A key issue in the case is whether employees should rely solely on Title VII — the federal workplace discrimination law enacted in 1964 — or whether Title IX offers a separate legal avenue.
That distinction carries major consequences.
Unlike Title VII, Title IX does not cap monetary damages. It also skips the administrative hurdle requiring workers to first file complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before going to court.
The 11th Circuit concluded that because Title VII already governs workplace discrimination, Congress did not clearly create a separate employee lawsuit mechanism inside Title IX.
The federal government backed that interpretation. After being asked by the justices to weigh in, the U.S. Solicitor General’s office urged the court to take the case while agreeing that Title IX lacks the explicit language needed to authorize employee discrimination suits.
The Supreme Court’s earlier 2005 ruling in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education recognized retaliation claims under Title IX for employees punished after reporting alleged discrimination. But the current dispute asks whether direct discrimination claims belong there too.
Joseph says she lost her coaching job in 2019 after raising concerns about unequal treatment between the men’s and women’s basketball programs at Georgia Tech. Crowther, meanwhile, alleges discrimination tied to the university’s handling of accusations made against him by students in 2020 — allegations he denies.
Both argued that the 11th Circuit’s approach would create uneven enforcement of Title IX depending on where a school is located.
The case, Crowther v. Board of Regents of the University of Georgia, is expected to become one of the court’s most closely watched education and employment disputes in the coming term.
