No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance....
(h) “Recipient” means ... any person, to whom Federal financial assistance is extended directly or through another recipient and which operates an education program or activity which receives or benefits from such assistance, including any subunit, successor, assignee, or transferee thereof.
I urge the passage of (Senator Bayh's) amendment to assure that no funds from S. 659, the Omnibus Education Amendments Act of 1971, be extended to any institution that practices biased admissions or educational policies.
The particular abuse in this instance, the one that I am seeking to correct here ... Hillsdale College, (is) subjected to Federal controls by way of student assistance or a GI grant to a student. Hillsdale College has gone to great pains to avoid any appearance of Federal support. They have not participated in Federal aid programs. They desire to be completely independent of the Federal taxpayer in the support of the institution. They are being subjected to Federal control because some student may have Federal assistance. My amendment would simply say that it has to be a direct Federal assistance before they are subjected to the HEW regulations at all.
The House committee studied this (Departmental) interpretation. I emphasized at that time that Title IX, which dealt with discrimination so far as women are concerned, is parallel in its language and enforcement expectations with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The courts have held that Title VI * * * does apply if a student receives Federal aid. If a student is benefited, the school is benefited. It is not new law; it is tradition, and I think in this instance it is a pretty fundamental tradition, that we treat all institutions alike as far as requiring them to meet a standard of educational opportunity equal for all of their students.
Whether the cash payments are made to a university and thereafter distributed to eligible veterans rather than the present mode of transmittal is irrelevant, since the payments ultimately reach the same beneficiaries and the benefit to a university would be the same in either event. To argue otherwise would be to suggest that the applicability of Title VI turns on the role of a university as an exchange.... No rational distinction with respect to Title VI coverage can be made on this basis.
However the Supreme Court ultimately defines “program”, it cannot conclude that the more general the scope and purpose of the funding, the more restrictive the coverage of this remedial civil rights restrictive the coverage of this remedial civil rights statute will be. That result would be logically inconsistent. Yet Grove City asks this court to decide that an institution whose entire purpose is educational is exempt from coverage when it is financed with federal funds that can be used for virtually any educational purpose instead of a clearly limited function. The absurd result if this approach is followed to its logical conclusion is that general higher education aid would never bring the college under Title IX coverage because no specific program within the College would be earmarked to benefit from the federal funding.
(I)f two programs, one receiving federal aid directly and one not, are both administered by the same local agency for the education of essentially the same group of students, and if the funding of the former facilitates the latter by freeing funds for its use, or if discrimination in the latter affects the former by inhibiting or prohibiting a student's participation in that program, then both will be considered part of the same program *699 for purposes of bringing the latter within the reach of Title IX.
Logic supports a broad reading of Title IX and supports upholding the validity of the regulations. Congress explicitly amended Title IX to exclude social fraternities and sororities from its coverage. I cannot imagine what possible federal funds could have been earmarked for these programs. If such indirectly (if at all) benefitted programs were never intended to be covered by Title IX, it is inexplicable that Congress felt the need to exempt them specifically on another basis. Congressional consideration of the *700 proposed regulations focused almost exclusively on coverage of athletic programs. Indeed, many opponents of such coverage viewed Title IX as the possible death knell of college sports. If intercollegiate athletic programs, which almost never receive direct federal funding, were not intended to be covered, why was this a burning issue in consideration of the regulations?
(c)omply, to the extent applicable to it, with Title IX ... and all requirements imposed by ... the Department's regulation ... to the end that, in accordance with Title IX ... no person ... shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be otherwise subjected to discrimination under any education programs or activity for which the Applicant receives or benefits *706 from federal financial assistance....2
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