By Laura Anderson
On October 17, 2025 at the National Sports Law Institute’s 36th Annual Fall Conference, Professor Barbara Osborne, J.D., esteemed sports law professor from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, presented on the topic – So House Settled… What About Women’s Sports? Below is a summary of her presentation.
Title IX
People may ask what Title IX has to do with the recent settlement in the House v National College Athletic Association (NCAA) litigation. Professor Barbara Osborne, J.D., says that Title IX has everything to do with the House Settlement. In the House case, two expert reports were submitted to the court dealing with Title IX. Judge Wilken, with the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California, did not accept either report and stated that House was not a Title IX case. Even though the Judge did not accept the reports, she said that schools must comply with Title IX.
From elementary schools to college and universities, every school that receives federal funding, private or public, must comply with Title IX. There were initial concerns when Title IX was enacted, in 1972, and even when it was being proposed. The concerns were about how Title IX would affect athletic programs, specifically college athletics. The lawmakers who opposed it in 1972 proposed 17 amendments. They wanted to limit the reach of the legislation and its regulations. One of the goals of the amendments was to permit revenue-generating sports to keep their earnings without being required to support or fund female student athletes. Congress rejected the amendments and affirmed that there is no exception to Title IX. Athletic programs are not allowed to make benefits or opportunities available only to teams that generate revenue. Since then, many courts have had to deal with Title IX issues. With every decision, courts have said that no matter the source of the revenue, if money is coming into the athletic department, it must be used in a way to provide equal opportunities for male and female athletes.
In 1975 the regulations of Title IX were issued to provide the core inter-collegiate compliance requirements for schools for Title IX. Three of the main areas of the requirement deal with financial assistance, equal athletic participation opportunities, and equal benefits and treatment.
Financial Assistance
Financial assistance focuses on scholarships and other financial aid that can be given to student athletes. For financial assistance, scholarship is determined by comparing the percentage of male and female student athletes to the amount of scholarship dollars spent on them. To be compliant, a school must be within 1%, but there may be nondiscriminatory reasons for disparities greater than 1%. In 1979, additional policy interpretations that address financial assistance to student athletes in forms other than grants were published. Some of the forms of other scholarship dollars could be study abroad tuition, or laptops and tablets. These different forms of payment to athletes must still comply with Title IX and be proportionate between male and female athletes, staying within that 1% limit.
The new Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities for universities and student athletes mean more regulations and determining which payments must comply with Title IX. Student athletes can enter into sponsorship agreements with companies that permit student athletes to promote their NIL or monetize their social media. In those cases, Title IX is not related to those NIL deals because they were made with the individual athlete’s NIL. Title IX only regulates the actions of the schools. Schools cannot use gender to restrict access to financial assistance from a certain source or apply different criteria for financial assistance. When the NCAA relaxed the NIL rules, it created collectives which provided financial opportunities for athletes. Now, companies, boosters and other parties can directly contribute money to the athletic department and schools use those funds to induce athletes during the recruiting process. In this case, Title IX does apply and should be proportionately distributed between male and female athletes at the school and during the recruitment process.
Equal Athletic Participation
Equal athletic participation helps ensure that schools are complying and offering equal athletic opportunities to their male and female athletes. To determine if a school is complying with equal athletic participation there are three different tests. Schools can follow any one of the tests. First, participation can be based on an equation and whether there are equal opportunities based on the percentage of males and females in the college or university’s undergraduate student body. Second, a school can show continued program expansion and show that the school is continuing to add sports for the underrepresented gender. Third, schools can prove that they are already effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex. With the House Settlement, roster limits were set for teams in college athletics. From the roster limits, some universities have already been cutting teams because roster limits create program reduction. Therefore, schools will have a difficult time passing the test of expanding and adding sports for the underrepresented gender. Schools will have to rely on the proportionality test to comply with equal athletic participation under Title IX.
Equal Benefits and Treatment
Universities and colleges must equally provide benefits and treatments for their male and female student athletes. For equal benefits and treatment, Title IX determines if universities or colleges are providing equal benefits for quality, quantity and accessibility for each line item for men’s and women’s athletics. With the House settlement and NIL, three-line items are specifically affected: publicity, provision of support services, and recruitment of student athletes. For publicity, under Title IX, all teams and individual athletes need to be equally promoted. So, when asking donors to give for NIL initiatives, the money must be equal between male and female student athletes. With new NIL initiatives, new roles have been created within athletic departments, such as team general managers or chief revenues officers. Under Title IX, providing the support services needs to be equal between male and female athletes, including the new services created from NIL. Finally, recruitment for student athletes needs to be equitable and equal between male and female athletes. Since the House settlement, recruitment has dramatically changed. But still, under Title IX, recruitment needs to be proportionate between male and female athletes. Everything from funding for recruitment, support, and recruitment staff must follow the proportionate guidelines. The school controls the recruitment and opportunities; therefore, they need to comply with Title IX.
Conclusion
Title IX is a federal legislation. Since it was enacted in 1972, Title IX has been regulated by self-enforcement. The NCAA has not enforced it because that is not their job. Complaints can be filed with the U.S. Department of Education, but with constant changes in government programs these days, that may change as well. With the House Settlement and new NIL regulations for athletic departments, college athletics have dramatically changed. But even though things have changed and are continuing to change, schools must be aware of how the everchanging landscape complies or does not comply with Title IX.
Laura Anderson is a 1L Student at Marquette University Law School. She graduated from Yale University in 2020, where she was a member of the Varsity Women’s Ice Hockey Team for four years. Before law school, she worked in education and marketing for a large charter school network in New York City. She is originally from Minnesota.
