Published on: August 4, 2025
Part Two of the TNG@25 Anniversary Blog Series By: Brett A. Sokolow, J.D., Chair, TNG Consulting
Throughout the remainder of 2025, we’ll be celebrating the 25th anniversary of TNG’s service to the education field, with blogs that commemorate our accomplishments and the people who have helped to support our mission along the way. This second installment of our blog series highlights one of our most important accomplishments: helping the education field understand how Title IX applies to sex discrimination and harassment.
In 1991, I was a sophomore, and when a college girlfriend was sexually assaulted, our alma mater handled it poorly. We visited many attorneys, who told us there was no recourse. I kept asking about Title IX, and those attorneys were mystified at how an athletics equity law had anything to do with sexual assault. I remained convinced that it had everything to do with sexual assault, but as a college student, my opinion meant nothing. So, I set my sights on law school and proving that Title IX was more than an athletics equity law.
Once in law school, I wrote a law review article on the topic, but I was just a law student. My opinion meant nothing.
I hung out a shingle upon graduation, offering my services as a consultant to the education field. I was a newly minted lawyer with no background in civil rights or higher education. My opinion meant nothing.
I pointed out to the field that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) was using Title IX to address campus sexual violence. The field told me that individual OCR resolutions didn’t apply to the entire field, only to the school being investigated. My opinion meant nothing.
I was invited to join a panel at a conference in Orlando at the end of the last century. The topic was the future of addressing campus sexual violence. I found myself seated on the panel with the most prominent higher education attorney in the field at the time. When I opined that Title IX would shape that future more than any other force, this attorney scoffed at me aloud and told the audience that Title IX had nothing to do with sexual assault. My opinion meant nothing.
Then, the Supreme Court decided both Gebser and Davis in 1998 and 1999. These two cases have become the most important Title IX precedents. Both were addressed as sexual harassment cases, but in both cases, the victims experienced sexual assault. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor quoted my law review article in her majority opinion in Davis. Maybe my opinions had a glimmer of hope.
In 2011, the Department of Education issued the infamous Dear Colleague Letter of April 4, insisting that Title IX controlled how schools needed to address campus sexual violence. Out of the dark forest, and toward the light?
Today, no one challenges the idea that Title IX addresses more than athletics. It is a given that in education, Title IX is the foremost source of industry standards for addressing sexual violence, sexual harassment, and sex discrimination. Today, a generation coming of age in college has never known a time when Title IX was not there to protect them. I remember when it didn’t. I remember when my opinion meant nothing. We’re not going back.
Surely, I was not the only one who helped to popularize the significance of Title IX’s reach and applicability, nor the first. Bunny Sandler has that honor, and her mentorship meant the world to me. Many of us collectively pushed this notion to the forefront, and we did it through tireless conference presentations, writing incessantly, waging lawfare, lobbying Congress, and dialoguing with college and school administrations, one by one, until our lonely cries became the dominant discourse. When you find your north star, stay true to it.
Today, TNG consultants’ opinions matter. Our contributions have reshaped federal and state protections for those experiencing sex and gender-based violence, harassment, and discrimination. It’s disorienting to go from being an oft-doubted proponent for an unpopular idea to being the leader of a new field of Title IX compliance professionals, almost overnight. More importantly, a tool many suspected might have viability has become a powerful tool for change. Our mission is to lend our credibility to train the next generation of professionals and amplify voices that are often overlooked.
Is Title IX a panacea? No, it isn’t. It’s flawed, confusing, and controversial. It’s a political hot potato. There is still much work to be done to realize the vision that Title IX’s framers had for its humble, yet ambitious, 37 words. We do that work every day, because we are the stewards of Title IX’s promise, even as the next generation of stewards stands ready to take up the cause.
Title IX and I have aged together. We’re both 53. Title IX now covers a whole lot more than it did 50 years ago, and it will cover a whole lot more in 2072 than it does today. I probably won’t be around to see that, but I know I’ll have done all I could to help make it possible.
TNG Consulting provides more than 25 lawyers and consultants with Title IX subject matter expertise in the education field. TNG manages the primary membership association in the field, ATIXA, the Association of Title IX Administrators, with more than 19,000 members.