Was Maureen Mahoney merely loyally representing her client (Brown University, whose case against Title IX sex quotas she appealed to the Supreme Court in 1997) when she went on the record with me opposing sex quotas in 2000? Perhaps. But why would she take the time to talk to me — a writer she never heard of — if she didn’t believe what she was saying? The Cohen v Brown case was long over. The Supreme Court had refused to hear it. So why didn’t she just tell me she was busy? And who opposes sex quotas but favors racial quotas? Who does that?
When I talked to her, one of the many great points Maureen made was that schools should be allowed to determine how many female and male athletes they sponsor based on interest in athletics (not quotas) — just like they determine how many single sex dorms they have based on interest in housing. So where are all the Title IX lawsuits clamoring for “gender equity” in campus housing, I asked? Here’s what Maureen told me in 2000:
There is a normative judgement going on here that underlies this whole thing. Some people have gotten together and decided that we think men and women should be equally interested in sports and therefore participation has to be fifty-fifty. But when you look at the housing situation you don’t see universities saying, “We think men and women should be equally interested in living in campus dorms.” What’s different here is women have decided that men and women should be equally interested in varsity athletics. But as a normative matter, why should we think that? Why should we prefer that women play soccer as opposed to live in a dorm or dance ballet?