USCA11 Case: 18-13592 Document: 304-1 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 53 of 150
hoops. And at colleges, it is now commonplace to see young women training in state-of-the-art athletic facilities, from swimming pools to basketball arenas, with the records of their accolades hung from the rafters.
The implementation of Title IX and its regulations is the reason such scenes are now commonplace because Title IX “precipitated a virtual revolution for girls and women in sports.” Deborah Brake, The Struggle for Sex Equality in Sport and the Theory Behind Title IX, 34 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 13, 15 (2000). Indeed, “Title IX has paved the way for significant increases in athletic participation for girls and women at all levels of education.” Id. Its effects in this regard have been noteworthy:
Fewer than 300,000 female students participated in interscholastic athletics in 1971. By 1998–99, that number exceed 2.6 million, with significant increases in each intervening year. To put these numbers in perspective, since Title IX was enacted, the number of girls playing high school sports has gone from one in twenty-seven, to one in three.
Id. (footnotes omitted).
And, as courts and commentators have noted, “Title IX shapes women’s interest [in sports], rather than merely requiring equality based on a preexisting level of interest.” See David S. Cohen, Title IX: Beyond Equal Protection, 28 Harv. J.L. & Gender 217, 263 (2005) (emphasis added) (citing Cohen v. Brown Univ., 101 F.3d 155, 188 (1st Cir. 1996)). “What stimulated [the] remarkable
