Equal Protection and Public Education Essay

The Equal Protection Act is a protection Act that applies to everyone in the United States. It is impactful even in the field of education and acts especially for K-12. One of the very factions where the Act is witnessed in the education sector is in the classification that regards sports programs that are based on gender. The Act states that it is necessary to enhance inclusivity in all sports programs in the school environment and that gender should not be used as a discriminating factor. In that spectral view, it is necessary for schools to ensure that they uphold diversity and that they do not use gender as an aspect of discrimination in sports programs.

The Equal Protection Clause is part of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States. The clause articulates that there is no one not even the state has the ability to deny any person equal ability to enjoy the same privileges as others. There are scores of legal issues that are presented in regard to the engagement in sports by all students regardless of their gender. The legal issues that are presented by the segregation of students based on gender are that the female gender is weak than the male gender and therefore they should not participate in some sports (Jackson & Wu, 2015). Legal issues of discrimination, unequal treatment, and unfair policies among others are some of the legal issues that come with classification in sports programs based on gender.

Various Supreme Court cases regarding classification in sports based on gender have been decided. One of the cases that were presented to the Supreme Court is the Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools (1992 Green, L. (2017).  ). The case was a discrimination case where a female college student Christine Franklin was treated wrongly by her coach because she was a female. The Supreme Court decided that she could see the school because she was denied equal protection. 

The Darrin v. Gould (1975) is another case that was decided by the Supreme Court. It was a case whereby a school illegally discriminated girls from entering in a field where interschool competitions, not on any other basis but simply because they were women (“Darrin v. Gould”, 2019). It was undue discrimination that the court decided that the classification and refusal of the female students to participate in the sports on the basis of their gender was an illegal classification that was opposed to the equal protection clause (Ortiz, 2017). Discrimination based on the sex of an individual for K-12 students was decided to be illegal in many other cases. The Burning Tree Club, Inc. v. Bainum, 305 Md. 53, Md. Court of Appeals (1985) is also another case where use of the Equal Protection Clause found classifications in sports based on gender to be illegal as they are discriminative, cause unequal treatment, and are sources of unfair treatment (“Burning Tree Club, Inc. v. Bainum, 305 Md. 53, Md. Court of Appeals (1985)”, 2019).

The Equal Protection Clause requires that everyone in the United States to be given the same privileges and protected from discrimination on any grounds. It is a law the prevents discrimination of the people of the United States on the grounds of diversity which means that no one in the United States should be discriminated based on their race, gender or sexuality. The clause, therefore, requires that even in school sporting activities, no one should be discriminated against because of their gender. Classification of sports across the K-12 students based on gender is therefore illegal.

References

Burning Tree Club, Inc. v. Bainum, 305 Md. 53, Md. Court of Appeals (1985). (2019). Retrieved from https://www.ravellaw.com/opinions/a19a6b8f411c9d38a64365babbb002da

 Darrin v. Gould. (2019). Retrieved from https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1975/43276-1.html

Green, L. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.nfhs.org/articles/top-ten-us-supreme-court-cases-for-high-school-athletic-directors/

Jackson, F. J., & Wu, E. Y. (2015). Must We Deploy Drones in the Twenty-First Century to Target under the Radar Discrimination against Minority Women at Law Schools at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Colum. J. Gender & L., 31, 164.

Ortiz, J. A. (2017). The Failures of Equal Protection: An Examination of the Supreme Court’s Three-Tiered Test in Equal Protection Claims.