Does Sandoval Apply to Title IX?
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) the primary agency charged with administering Title IX has issued regulations, like those under Title VI, that prohibit “disparate impact” discrimination. If Sandoval is applied in this context, private plaintiffs will no longer be able to sue to enforce those regulations. Nor is OCR itself likely to enforce them. Although it has the authority to terminate the federal funding of an institution that fails to comply with Title IX or its regulations, it has never in its 35-year history done so. One suspects that the Bush Administration will not break this precedent. But Sandoval’s application, in this context, is much less straightforward than it might seem. To begin, Title IX and Title VI, while similar, are not identical. As mentioned above, the Court has held that Title VI requires proof of intentional discrimination. That holding was based on the statute’s legislative history, which suggests that Title VI was designed to mirror the Constitution’s Equa
