Title IX stated that no one shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from any education program receiving federal assistance. A muddle ensued.
When Richard Nixon signed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the news was greeted with a yawn. The law had bipartisan support and its guiding purpose—prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions—was so uncontroversial that the New York Times gave the story a mere sentence of coverage. Fast forward a few decades: Title IX is one of the most consequential domestic laws of our time, a lightning rod of controversy and a textbook example of the way our regulatory apparatus can make an Orwellian muddle out of noble ideals.
The bill’s 50th anniversary would seem to be a good time to reflect on this troubling evolution. Alas, journalist-activist Sherry Boschert’s “37 Words: Title IX and Fifty Years of Fighting Sex Discrimination” doesn’t show much interest in the law’s profound and unexpected effects. Her indifference will not reassure anyone uneasy about the so-called administrative state—the vast unelected bureaucracy that has given us, among much else, the current iteration of Title IX regulations.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal
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Kay S. Hymowitz is the William E. Simon Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. She is the author of several books, most recently The New Brooklyn. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal