Don’t Make a Federal Case Out of It: Drawing the Line on Title IX Overreach

M.K. v. Pearl River School District

In today’s regulatory climate, even a schoolyard dust-up can become a federal case, especially when bureaucrats in Washington see an opportunity to expand their power. When that happens, CIR takes action to stop it.

That’s exactly what occurred in Pearl River County, Mississippi, where CIR successfully defended a rural school district against a troubling attempt to stretch federal anti-discrimination law beyond its original meaning. The plaintiff, represented by a Georgetown Law School clinic and backed by the Biden Administration’s Department of Education, argued that student teasing concerning sexual orientation was grounds for a federal civil rights lawsuit.

In this case, parents of a sixth grade boy claimed that school officials failed to intervene quickly enough when a few of their son’s classmates teased him, occasionally using the word “gay.” They argued that the behavior was a federal offense under an education funding statute, Title IX, that could trigger school district liability and significant monetary damages.

Title IX was enacted in 1972 to end discrimination “on the basis of sex” in education programs that receive federal funding. Its purpose was to ensure that girls and boys had equal educational opportunities. The law says nothing about sexual orientation or gender identity, and Congress has never amended it to do so. But for years, federal agencies have tried to “reinterpret” Title IX to impose sweeping mandates that Congress never debated or approved.

CIR took action to defend the district but also to defend a more fundamental principle: Congress sets the conditions in federal funding statutes that states accept or decline, and unelected bureaucrats can’t change those conditions at a later date.

The Supreme Court has ruled that spending statutes are “in the nature of a contract” between Congress and the states that accept the funds. The Court also has held that the terms of the deal must be clearly set forth in the statute. And thus, the states’ reasonable
understanding of a funding statute’s terms control if there is any doubt. In this case, CIR also argued that the facts didn’t trigger liability regardless of Title IX’s scope.

In a unanimous three-judge opinion in July, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court—which governs Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi—ruled that the teasing was not “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” enough to constitute discrimination under Title IX. That threshold, long established in case law, exists to distinguish serious sex-based harassment from other improper conflict.

While the appellate court did not reach CIR’s broader argument under the Constitution’s Spending Clause, it left in place the lower court’s ruling that had sharply limited the federal government’s ability to unilaterally rewrite the terms of federal funding statutes.

That decision remains one of the few published federal rulings to reject this kind of Title IX overreach.

We’ll continue to seek broader limits on federal spending coercion under the Constitution, but we’re also proud to have secured this victory for the school district. Our win reaffirms that not every grievance belongs in federal court. School teasing is common, and local school officials have wide latitude to take reasonable disciplinary actions without facing federal liability for run-of-the-mill decisions.

It is unreasonable to make a federal case out of such routine situations.

Equally important, federal intervention also undermines local accountability structures that govern normal school operations. Strong, well-functioning local institutions are the bedrock of our Constitution’s federalist design.