Education Law

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Essay
College Athletes As Employees: Implications for Title IX and (Un)Equal Pay
Hana Ferrero
Hana Ferrero is a J.D. Candidate at The University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2026.

This Case Note argues that categorizing college athletes as employees would, under a faithful application of Title IX and the court’s reasoning in Johnson, take wage payments outside the purview of Title IX’s equal opportunity requirement for athletes. Instead, Title IX as applied to college employees would govern, along with the other relevant employment discrimination laws. Under these statutes, it would likely be permissible for colleges to pay athletes in revenue-generating sports more than those athletes in nonrevenue sports.

Administrative Law Civil Rights Education
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Article
Volume 89.5
The Public Right to Education
Matthew Patrick Shaw
Assistant Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School; Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education, Vanderbilt Peabody College. Affiliated Scholar, American Bar Foundation. J.D., Columbia University; Ed.D., Ed.M., Harvard University; A.B., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I thank Bernadette Atuahene, David Baluarte, Derek Black, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Jessica Clarke, Shari Diamond, Jonathan Feingold, Jonathan Glater, Vinay Harpalani, Brandon Hasbrouck, Brant Hellwig, Alexandra Klein, Terry Maroney, Ajay Mehrotra, Elizabeth Mertz, Robert Mikos, Melissa Murray, Laura Beth Nielsen, Shaun Ossei-Owusu, Kish Parella, Asad Rahim, James Ryan, Christopher Schmidt, Christopher Serkin, Daniel Sharfstein, Joan Shaughnessy, Jennifer Shinall, Fred Smith, Kevin Stack, Alan Trammell, Joshua Weishart, Kevin Woodson, Dwayne Wright, and Ingrid Wuerth for their helpful feedback on early drafts and much needed collegial support. I also thank the Frances Lewis Law Center at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and Christopher Seaman and Allegra Steck of that Center for their generous research support and Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College for its equally generous support for the research leave that yielded this Article. Franklin Runge at the Washington and Lee University School of Law provided incomparable library support, and George Bouchard, Francisco Santelli, Russel Wade, Jon D’Orazio, Richard Hall, Michelle Koffa, Ashton Toone, and Wesley Wei provided invaluable research assistance. I would also like to thank the student editors of the Law Review. This Article also benefitted immensely from helpful comments and remarks in faculty workshops at the American Bar Foundation, University of Chicago Law School, Vanderbilt Law School, and Washington and Lee University School of Law, as well as in the John Mercer Langston Workshop.

Public education is “the most important function of state and local government” and yet not a “fundamental right or liberty.” This Article engages one of constitutional law’s most intractable problems by introducing “the public right to education” as a doctrinal pathway to a constitutional right to education process in three steps.

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Comment
Volume 89.4
In Need of Better Material: A New Approach to Implementation Challenges Under the IDEA
Annie Kors
B.A. 2018, Yale University; J.D. Candidate 2023, The University of Chicago Law School.

Thank you to Professor Emily Buss for thoughtful feedback throughout this process and to the incredible editors of the Law Review. 

How far may a school district deviate from the services specified in an IEP and remain in compliance with the IDEA? In other words, how much of the adequate written plan is the student in fact entitled to receive? There are two existing approaches to failure-to-implement cases: the materiality approach and the per se test. This Comment argues that both approaches are flawed.

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Comment
Volume 89.4
The Constitutionality of Orthodoxy: First Amendment Implications of Laws Restricting Critical Race Theory in Public Schools
Dylan Salzman
B.A. 2019, Middlebury College; J.D. Candidate 2023, The University of Chicago Law School

I would like to thank Professors Geoffrey Stone, Aziz Huq, and Genevieve Lakier for their guidance. Additional thanks go to the editors and staff of the University of Chicago Law Review for their thoughtful advice and insight. 

This Comment argues that existing doctrine supports recognizing a student right to be free from political orthodoxy in public education. It proposes a burden-shifting test for vindicating that right.

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Book review
86.1
The New Legal Liberalism
Emma Kaufman
Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago Law School

For helpful conversations and feedback, I am grateful to Will Baude, Emily Buss, Travis Crum, Justin Driver, William Hubbard, Lucy Kaufman, Brian Leiter, Jonathan Masur, Wendy Moffat, John Rappaport, David Strauss, Laura Weinrib, and the editors of The University of Chicago Law Review.

Over the past three decades, legal academics have mounted a sustained attack on the traditional liberal idea that judges protect minority rights against majority will.

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