Harder case
Sex-bias suits against NCAA made more difficult
Posted: Tuesday February 23, 1999 12:59 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court Tuesday made it harder to sue the NCAA under a law banning sex bias in educational programs receiving federal aid.
Ruling unanimously, the court said the fact that the NCAA receives dues from federally financed colleges and universities does not open it to lawsuits under the anti-bias law known as Title IX of the Education Acts of 1972.
But the decision left open the possibility that such lawsuits still may be allowed. The justices told a lower court to consider other arguments raised by Renee Smith, an Ohio woman who says she was illegally declared ineligible to play intercollegiate volleyball.
Smith had argued the NCAA can be sued because the dues it receives from member schools makes it an indirect recipient of federal funds.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court, "At most, the association's receipt of dues demonstrates that it indirectly benefits from the federal assistance afforded its members.
"This showing, without more, is insufficient to trigger Title IX coverage," Ginsburg wrote.
The NCAA's lawyers told the court during arguments in January that the association was not a federal aid recipient and that athletes should take up discrimination complaints with the individual schools.
Smith, who lives in Wintersville, Ohio, played volleyball for St. Bonaventure in the 1991-92 and 1992-93 seasons. She chose not to participate in the next season, and she graduated in less than three years.
Smith later pursued a graduate degree at Hofstra University and a law degree at the University of Pittsburgh. At each, her attempts to play two more seasons of volleyball were thwarted by an NCAA rule that bars graduate students from competing in intercollegiate athletics at a school other than the one from which they earned their undergraduate degree.
Her lawsuit said the NCAA grants men a disproportionate number of waivers from that eligibility rule. The NCAA said more men seek such waivers and added that a higher percentage of women are granted them.
A federal judge threw out Smith's lawsuit, but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated her Title IX claim last year. "The NCAA is not merely an incidental beneficiary of federal funds," the appeals court said.
Today, the Supreme Court disagreed.
"Entities that receive federal assistance, whether directly or through an intermediary, are recipients within the meaning of Title IX; entities that only benefit economically from federal assistance are not," Ginsburg wrote.
The justices returned the case to a lower court to hear Smith's arguments that she should be allowed to sue the NCAA under Title IX because it receives federal funds through the National Youth Sports Program and on grounds that schools have handed controlling authority to the NCAA.
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