Gender
Discrimination Law Prohibits Retaliation
Roderick
Jackson had been coaching girls' basketball for several years before
he started complaining to officials of the Alabama high school where
he worked.
Six years after
the Birmingham school district first hired him to coach, Jackson
transferred to another high school within the district. There, he
discovered that the girls' teams received neither equal funding
nor equal access to athletic facilities.
Finally, in
December of 2000, he complained to his school supervisors about
the perceived inequity. The supervisors did nothing to correct the
deficiencies Jackson had highlighted.
Title
IX Violations
Instead, they
began to give Jackson negative performance evaluations; six months
after he had begun to complain, the school relieved him of his coaching
duties.
The Alabama
school district-like most K-12 and postsecondary institutions-was
subject to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. That federal
statute provides that no person "shall, on the basis of sex,
be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or
be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity
receiving federal financial assistance."
Jackson himself
was not the direct victim of the alleged Title IX violations he
complained about; rather, the girls who had participated or wanted
to participate in athletics bore the brunt.
In his lawsuit
against the school district, however, Jackson claimed the negative
evaluations and termination of his coaching responsibilities were
unlawful retaliation against him under Title IX.
The court in
Jackson's case ruled in favor of the district. It held that nothing
in the language of Title IX allowed for a claim of retaliation such
as the one Jackson had filed. In a 5-4 decision, however, the Supreme
Court reversed that ruling.
The majority,
through Justice O'Connor, conceded that, in enacting Title IX, Congress
had failed expressly to create protections against retaliation for
complaining over alleged violations. Nevertheless, the majority
reasoned that enforcement of Title IX depended upon inferring such
a protection from the statute.
A
Court Divided
"Retaliation
against a person because that person has complained of sex discrimination,"
Justice O'Connor wrote, "is another form of intentional sex
discrimination encompassed by Title IX's private cause of action.
Retaliation is, by definition, an intentional act.
"It is
a form of 'discrimination' because the complainant is being subjected
to differential treatment."
Writing on behalf
of the four dissenters, Justice Thomas relied on a literal reading
of Title IX, and urged that a retaliation claim is not one of discrimination
based on sex.
"For example,"
Justice Thomas argued, "suppose a sexist air traffic controller
withheld landing permission for a plane because the pilot was a
woman. While the sex discrimination against the female pilot no
doubt adversely impacted male passengers aboard that plane, one
would never say that they were discriminated against 'on the basis
of sex' by the controller's action."
Over recent
years, courts have increasingly recognized retaliation claims by
persons who allege to have suffered adverse employment actions merely
for complaining of civil rights violations. Jackson v. Birmingham
Board of Education evidences that trend.
Published in the Fall 2005 Edition of In Brief
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