How Grove City College took a star turn in Title IX history
Court case went all the way to the Supreme Court in challenging how far the reach of federal government could go
Throughout its 50 years of existence, Title IX has faced a number of legal challenges. One of the strongest and most memorable came from only about 60 miles north of downtown Pittsburgh.
In 1983, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Grove City College v. Bell, a case involving the small, private college in Grove City, Pa. Of all the events that have altered or transformed Title IX over the past five decades, the Grove City case is among the most notable after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school on certain matters.
How the case came to be is its own story.
Since it was founded in 1876, Grove City — a Christian, co- educational, private institution — had refused to directly accept any funding from the federal government because doing so, in the college’s view, would compromise its independence. It was a designation that was put to the test in July 1976, when the entity now known as the Department of Education mandated that Grove City file an assurance of compliance in which it would state that it was not discriminating on the basis of gender, in adherence with Title IX regulations. The government believed it had legal justification in doing so, as 140 of Grove City’s roughly 2,200 students received direct federal grants.
Grove City refused to comply, citing that it did not receive direct federal funding, but in response, the federal government started the process of terminating the grants of those 140 students.
From those actions, a larger legal ordeal was born.
In November 1978, Grove City and a handful of its students who received federal grants filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, asking the court to overturn the stoppage of their grants and ordering the government not to require an assurance of Title IX compliance from the college. Nearly two years later, the judge ruled in their favor, saying the federal government could not overrule those grants, regulations requiring Grove City to offer an assurance were invalid and there was no evidence the school had engaged in gender-based discrimination.
After passing through a United States Court of Appeals — which ruled the federal government had the right to enforce Title IX requirements and the students’ aid could be discontinued because of Grove City’s refusal to comply with the order — the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
In February 1984, it rendered its verdict. A 63 majority found that when a student receives federally funded grants, Title IX requirements only apply to the specific area or department of the institution that benefits from that federal money and that those regulations don’t apply to the college as a whole. In the concurring opinion, Justice Lewis F. Powell wrote the case was an “example of overzealousness on the part of the Federal Government.”
The decision, issued 12 years after Title IX’s passage, elicited a mixed reaction.
A March 1, 1984, op-ed in the Pittsburgh Press said, “Grove City says it will try to raise new student-aid funds to replace those which now come from the federal government. The school would then be free of any federal claim to interfere in its affairs. That’s a principle worth establishing — and worth fighting for.” Others, namely women’s rights advocates and some elected representatives, feared the ruling would hinder the federal government from exercising its authority to prevent discrimination against women in American higher education.
Eventually, those worries were translated into action.
Several years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, effectively reversing the Grove City decision by making Title IX applicable to all operations of institutions that receive federal funding. The law received sweeping bipartisan support, so much so that Congress was able to override a veto from President Ronald Reagan.
It was an act that relegated Grove City to being a historical footnote of sorts, but one that remains an integral part of telling the larger story of Title IX.