Title IX, Coaches and the Supreme Court’s Next Big Test
OPENING STATEMENTS
Last week, I flagged a new Title IX case that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear in its next term. But I think it’s important to go into it in more depth this week because it highlights how unsettled Title IX is as universities scramble to make sense of the fast‑evolving relationship between athletes’ NIL and other economic opportunities on one side, and enrollment and eligibility rules on the other.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear consolidated cases from MaChelle Joseph, the former Georgia Tech head women’s basketball coach, and Thomas Crowther, a former Augusta University art professor. Both alleged sex discrimination in their employment and tried to bring those claims under Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal funding. The Eleventh Circuit shut the door on them, holding that Title IX does not provide an implied private right of action for employees alleging sex discrimination in employment and reversing earlier district court decisions that had allowed those claims to move forward.
That ruling directly conflicts with decisions in several other federal appeals courts, which for years have allowed employees of schools and universities, including coaches and athletic staff, to sue under Title IX for workplace sex discrimination. That split is why the Supreme Court stepped in and will now decide, during the term that begins in October 2026, whether employees at federally funded institutions can continue to use Title IX at all as a vehicle for employment‑based sex discrimination claims. Title IX already protects employees and administrators in cases involving sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment and hostile environments, when that misconduct interferes with equal access to an education program.
The question before the Supreme Court is this: does Title IX include an implied private right of action for employees claiming sex discrimination in employment, or is that territory reserved for Title VII and other explicit employment statutes? The answer will determine whether coaches, athletic trainers, administrators, and faculty keep a federal tool they have relied on for decades to challenge discrimination by their employers, a tool that in many situations fits the realities of campus life better than traditional workplace laws.
Title VII remains the core federal employment statute, but it comes with strict timelines, a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charge requirement, and a different liability structure. Title IX has offered something different: a direct route into federal court, grounded in the institution’s obligations as an educational program, which can capture patterns of inequity in funding, facilities, staffing, and retaliation that don’t always show up cleanly in HR files. That’s one reason coaches and athletic staff have used Title IX when they challenge unequal pay, unequal support for women’s programs, or retaliation for advocating for their athletes.
The implications are far‑reaching, for university employees but also for student‑athletes, and certainly if the latter are ever deemed employees. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Joseph and Crowther, it will affirm what most of the country has been operating under for years: that Title IX is a parallel path, alongside Title VII, for employees of federally funded schools to bring employment‑based sex discrimination claims. For coaches and staff, that means keeping access to a statute that speaks the language of athletics and education - such as budgets, rosters, and facilities, - not just individual personnel decisions.
For institutions, it would mean higher potential exposure. Every sex‑based personnel decision in an athletics department or academic unit would be evaluated not only under workplace law but also under the broader equity obligations tied to federal education funding. In an era where revenue sharing, NIL, and donor‑funded “collectives” already raise complicated Title IX questions, that would push schools to think about coaches’ contracts, resource allocations, and staff retaliation risk as part of their Title IX compliance architecture, not separate from it.
If the Supreme Court instead sides with the institutions and holds that employees cannot sue under Title IX at all for employment discrimination, coaches and staff will be pushed back into a narrower box. They will still have Title VII and state law, but they will lose the ability to tie their own treatment directly to the school’s Title IX obligations, including claims that they were punished for insisting that women’s programs be treated equitably.
For student‑athletes, this may sound like an inside‑baseball fight about which statute goes on a complaint. But it isn’t. The federal government has suggested that this case is also about whether and how courts should recognize implied rights of action at all. The way the Supreme Court talks about implied rights in this context could influence how creative plaintiffs can be with Title IX in other areas, including NIL structures, revenue‑sharing plans, and policies that affect athletes’ educational access and eligibility.
All of this is happening while the ground under college sports is shifting. There are unsettled core questions like how NIL and revenue sharing will work, how new congressional proposals might reshape the landscape, whether athletes may become employees, how far NCAA eligibility and transfer rules can go without violating antitrust law, and how Title IX applies to all of it. Keep in mind that we should expect a first wave of Title IX lawsuits related to revenue distributions sometime early in 2027, possible around the time a decision may be rendered.
If courts eventually recognize athletes as employees – say, of schools or conferences – the line between “education” and “employment” on campus gets blurry fast. In that world, the question the Supreme Court is about to answer becomes even more important. If coaches and staff cannot bring employment‑based claims under Title IX, will athlete‑employees be able to? Or will they also be confined to workplace statutes that were not written with scholarship loss, eligibility, and program‑wide gender equity in mind? The Joseph and Crowther cases are a reminder that the scope of Title IX in the employment context goes directly to the tools real people have when they are pushed out, underpaid, or punished for insisting that women and girls get what the law already promised them.
EXHIBIT A
The new “Protect College Sports Act” reads less like reform and more like a preemptive legal shield for the NCAA’s old business model. The one that doesn’t give student-athletes a seat at the table. By granting targeted antitrust immunity so the NCAA and a College Sports Commission can enforce compensation caps, transfer limits, and House‑style NIL restrictions, the bill tries to freeze in federal statute exactly the restraints courts have been dismantling. That is an audacious bet that Congress and the courts will bless a bespoke carve‑out designed to keep athletes cheaper than the market allows, while executives and coaches stay on their current skyrocketing trajectory. Sen. Chris Murphy’s criticism—that the bill exists to “limit the compensation of athletes while protecting the huge salaries” of everyone else—captures why getting to 60 votes looks like a stretch, even before the inevitable constitutional and antitrust challenges begin.
EXHIBIT B
I found Kirby Smart’s quote from this week’s SEC spring meetings fascinating: “I’ve been a huge advocate that if we can’t find rules that everybody plays by, then we should play by our own.” That line lands because it captures how exasperated the SEC is with a system it helped break. But the problem in college sports isn’t a lack of rules; it’s decades of treating every rule as a puzzle to be gamed, from the long veil of “amateurism” to “voluntary workouts” to NIL collectives and transfer tampering. An SEC breakaway doesn’t fix that culture. I actually may supercharge it—swapping one set of loophole‑writers (the NCAA and Congress) for another with even more leverage and even fewer external checks.
ON THE DOCKET
We all should be watching the Brendan Sorsby saga, as it has the NCAA in a genuine no‑win spot. His attorney is arguing that compulsive gambling is a diagnosed medical condition, and that NCAA bylaws cannot single him out for punishment because of that condition. But Sorsby also placed bets on a team he played for, violating the clearest line in the NCAA rulebook, one he almost certainly knew existed. However the judge threads that needle, the ruling will set precedent on how far medical and mental‑health protections extend when athletes break gambling rules, and could echo into future cases involving addiction, depression, or anxiety‑related misconduct.
FOOTNOTES
"If we don't find a way to create some level of regulation in the market, a lot of people are going to go bankrupt pretty quick. We're two and a half years away from having an NIL budget that's greater than the TV revenue for our entire university."
