A test of how far Title IX protections reach

Although he lost his coaching job, he continued to be employed as a teacher at the school. Jackson sued the school board to get his coaching job back with back pay, but both a federal judge and a federal appeals court panel tossed out his suit. The judges ruled that Title IX does not authorize suits claiming retaliation.

Jackson has since been rehired as a coach. But the issues of back pay and attorney fees are still pending.

The case is being watched by civil rights and women's rights groups, who are urging that the court adopt an expansive reading of the gender-bias law. Urging a more restrictive reading are the State of Alabama and eight other states, conservative public-interest law firms, and the National School Boards Association.

The College Sports Council in Washington filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of neither party.

The statute appears to authorize only court cases filed by direct victims of discrimination, not retaliatory claims like Jackson's, says Lawrence Joseph, a Washington lawyer who filed the CSC brief. But the administrative regulations written by the Department of Education (rather than Congress) do recognize retaliation as a cause of action, he says.

Had Jackson filed an administrative complaint with the Department of Education rather than taking his case immediately to federal court, the dispute may have long ago been resolved through mediation rather than litigation. That's because Congress armed the administrative process with a powerful weapon - the mandate that all federal funding be cut off to any institution that engages in sex discrimination.

"No one has ever cut off the funding of a school under Title IX," Mr. Joseph says. But he notes that there is little chance the Birmingham school district would have fought Jackson's retaliation claim had that threat become clear.

The claim for back pay is only a couple thousand dollars a year for a basketball coach. In contrast, the cost of litigating an issue all the way up to the US Supreme Court and potentially through a full trial would probably cost several hundred thousand dollars and perhaps more than $1 million, Joseph says.

In his brief, Joseph argues that if Jackson wants to enforce the Department of Education's regulation against retaliation in his federal court case, he must comply with the entire regulatory process, which includes first filing an administrative complaint.

Such a complaint would put the school district on notice of a potential problem and open the door to a relatively inexpensive negotiated settlement prior to any legal action taking place.

But Joseph says that even had the coach filed administratively, it remains unclear whether the Department of Education could use its antiretaliation regulation as legal justification to cut off a school's federal funding.

"They certainly have the authority to entertain it," he says. "The question is whether they have the authority to enforce it."

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