Supreme Court to weigh appeal from former Georgia Tech basketball coach suing over sex discrimination
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets head coach MaChelle Joseph is pictured on the bench against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at McCamish Pavilion.
(CNN) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to review a sex discrimination case from former NCAA basketball coach MaChelle Joseph, who alleged that Georgia Tech violated federal anti-discrimination laws by providing more resources for the men’s basketball team than for the women’s program.
Joseph, who was fired as head coach in 2019, sued under several laws, including Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. But workplace discrimination cases are typically brought instead under Title VII, which is specifically geared toward employment but which also includes additional requirements and caps on how much can be awarded in damages.
The question for the Supreme Court, which has divided federal appeals courts, is whether Joseph may bring her claims under Title IX. The answer will have important ramifications for both publicly funded schools, which could put them on the hook for larger damage awards in sex discrimination cases, and employees, who may have another avenue to pursue those claims – or have that route closed off.
Joseph told the Supreme Court that the case would have “far-reaching implications.”
A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2024 that Joseph could not rely on Title IX. The full appeals court declined to review that decision last year.
That ruling, Joseph said, “undermines the uniform enforcement of Title IX across the country.” And, she said, “it threatens to destabilize enforcement of antidiscrimination provisions under” other federal laws that bar discrimination but lack explicit language authorizing lawsuits to enforce those provisions.
The case is consolidated with a similar suit filed by Thomas Crowther, an art professor whose position on the faculty of Augusta University was not renewed in 2021 after reports of inappropriate conduct, including sexual harassment, according to court records. Crowther denied wrongdoing and argued that he was never given an adequate opportunity to contest the allegations.
The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court to take up the appeal to resolve the different approaches taken by federal appeals courts. The Department of Justice urged the Supreme Court to uphold the appeals court ruling against Joseph and Crowther.
The high court has expressed skepticism in past cases about people being able to file lawsuits absent an explicit authorization in the law passed by Congress.
“Title IX does not provide employees of federally funded educational institutions a private right of action to sue for sex discrimination in employment,” the Trump administration told the court.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
