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Kelley V. University Of Illinois: Case Study

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Titles and Citation: Kelley v. Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, 1993

Facts:
Members of the University of Illinois’s men’s swim team filed a lawsuit in 1993 claiming that the school was discriminating against them by cutting their team and not the women’s swim team. The members claimed that this decision was in violation of Title IX, a law that prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender, along with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The University of Illinois made the decision to cut the men’s swim team due to budgetary limitations. Along with the men’s swim team, the men’s diving, men’s fencing, and women’s diving team were also cut for the same reason. There were many instances previous to this case where female athletes have filed lawsuits claiming that they were being discriminated against, and that the institution was in violation of …show more content…

In 1993, the law was converted from a statute that outlawed discrimination on the basis of gender, largely exclusion from participation opportunities (athletics), to one that provides “equal opportunity for members of both sexes.” Title IX is largely statistical, as most higher learning institutions strive to have very close to an equal percentage of women and men involved in athletics with respect to enrollment. Many decisions regarding Title IX are made for statistical purposes only.
Fourteenth Amendment (Equal Protection Clause): For one to file an equal protection claim, one has to prove that the “government intentionally discriminated against the plaintiff by classifying him or her for different treatment under the law than one similarly situated.” For the equal protection clause to be violated, a government has to group individuals in such a way that denies them certain rights or provides different treatment on the basis of traits they have no control over.

Constitutional Issue and Legal

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