It’s not every day that you get an email from ACLU. If you aren’t aware, since being co-founded in part by Hellen Keller in New York City in 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union has been involved in dozens of major cases defending the fundamental civil rights of individuals and causes both popular and very much not so. In 1925, the ACLU represented high school science teacher, John Scopes, in what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. Nearly 30 years later they played a significant role in the Brown v Board decision overturning “separate but equal” education for Black and white students. So when they reached out wanting to do a podcast episode with us about the state of Title IX in 2024, I had to say yes. In the past we’ve done episodes about how classroom teachers can best support LGBTQ students in potentially hostile policy environments, but we are well overdue for a national look at the current rights under Title IX for LGBTQIA+ students, pregnant and parenting students, and for all students facing sex-based harassment and assault and the obligations schools have to protect them.

Jennesa Calvo-Friedman is currently a staff attorney at the ACLU. Previously, she was the Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. Before joining the ACLU, Calvo-Friedman clerked for the Honorable Gerard E. Lynch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Honorable Ronnie Abrams of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. She was the Relman Civil Rights Fellow at the civil rights law firm Relman, Dane & Colfax. Calvo-Friedman received her B.A. from Swarthmore College, and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center, where she graduated first in class, was a Public Interest Law Scholar and Executive Editor of the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy.

US Dept of Education Title IX: https://www.ed.gov/titleix

ACLU Title IX Fact Sheet: https://www.aclu.org/documents/title-ix-fact-sheet

General Resources:

https://nwlc.org/respect-students/

https://www.equalrights.org/news/new-title-ix-rule-goes-into-effect-protecting-lgbtqi-other-students-but-not-in-all-states/

Pregnant and Parenting Students:

https://thepregnantscholar.org/titleix-updates-toolkit/

https://www.abetterbalance.org/our-issues/students-rights-emerging-workforce/

Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, and Gender Based Violence:

https://www.publicjustice.net/what-we-do/gender-sexual-violence/

https://www.advocatesforyouth.org/campaigns/know-your-ix/

LGBTQIA+:

https://www.glsen.org/title-ix

https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/lgbtq-rights#are-lgbtq-students-protected-from-discrimination-in-schools

https://legacy.lambdalegal.org/know-your-rights/article/youth-how-the-law-protects