A Texas district judge ordered Stephen F. Austin University to reinstate three women’s sports teams, after ruling against the university in a gender discrimination case.

Six female student-athletes from SFA’s disbanded women’s beach volleyball and bowling teams filed a class action lawsuit, claiming that the university had violated Title IX after the two programs, as well as men’s and women’s golf, were cut over the summer.

Women’s beach volleyball had just had its most successful season in school history before the cuts were announced in May 2025. The bowling team had won two national championships in 2016 and 2019.

The cuts resulted in a higher disparity between men’s and women’s programs at a university in which that disparity already existed. Before the programs were cancelled, 53% of the athletic department’s athletes were men while 47% were women. After the cuts, women athletes made up just 42%, despite SFA’s undergraduate population being 63% female.

“That's way off. It's mass sex discrimination. To actually get in compliance with Title IX, SFA would have to add over 200 opportunities for women to play sports," Arthur Bryant, a civil attorney representing the athletes in the case, said to CBS19.

In fact, Bryant’s team says that SFA has cut every single women’s athletic program added since 2003, while the only men’s team to be added since then — baseball — still stands.

“Title IX mandates that schools provide equal participation opportunities for men and women to compete in intercollegiate sports," the lawsuit states. "Nonetheless, SFA has a long history of depriving female athletes of an equal opportunity to participate. Consistent with that history, SFA opted to further discriminate against women in violation of Title IX by eliminating three successful women’s teams: beach volleyball, bowling and golf.”

The 53-year long federal civil rights law prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that benefit from federal funding, including the financial aid and scholarship grants awarded to male versus female students.

The Department of Education has a three-part test to determine whether a university complies with Title IX. The number of male and female athletes enrolled must be substantially proportionate; the institution must have a history and currently be active in expanding opportunities for both men and women; and the institution must be fully accommodating to the interests and abilities of both male and female athletes.

SFA, according to the U.S. District Judge Michael J. Truncale, failed all three portions of the test and so it must reinstate all three programs to keep the equal ratio between men’s and women’s programs.

This decision comes in the wake of the House vs NCAA settlement, which has received mixed reviews from the collegiate sporting world.

The settlement largely deals with revenue-sharing, allowing schools to directly pay athletes, and Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) regulations, granting universities the ability to compensate student-athletes and those who were unable to take advantage of NIL deals in the past.

However, that pay is predicted to be unequally distributed and is already causing scrutiny in the case of Title IX. A baseline distribution model predicts that football will receive 75% of the $20.5 million allotted to each school in 2025-26, with men’s basketball receiving 15%, women’s basketball receiving 5% and all other sports receiving the remaining 5%.

While universities ultimately have the power to decide how to distribute revenue among athletes, a large piece at play is Title IX — or, rather, the lack of it.

In 2020, the Biden administration mandated that Title IX also be applied to athletic scholarships and program funding, saying that revenue had to be distributed between male and female athletes equally — including any NIL revenue. This order resulted in the development of several more women’s programs in order to make up for the imbalance caused by popular men’s sports — namely football, which takes up a large amount of the average university’s scholarship fund.

But in February 2025, Trump ordered the Department of Education to repeal Biden’s executive order that Title IX be applied to collegiate sports.

“Without a credible legal justification, the Biden Administration claimed that NIL agreements between schools and student athletes are akin to financial aid and must, therefore, be proportionately distributed between male and female athletes under Title IX," Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. "The claim that Title IX forces schools and colleges to distribute student-athlete revenues proportionately based on gender equity considerations is sweeping and would require clear legal authority to support it."

The abandonment of Title IX is already taking full effect, especially when it comes to women’s collegiate sports. Despite growing popularity, especially in women’s basketball, gymnastics and softball, women’s sports, like the programs at SFA, are suffering from the lack of protection.

Kacie Breeding is one of two non-Charleston athletes suing, having run distance at Vanderbilt

Before the SFA ruling, eight female student-athletes challenged the House settlement, filing an appeal June 12 which states that the distribution of the total $2.8 billion NCAA settlement violates Title IX. The appeal so far has put a pause on all back payments compensating former collegiate athletes, and that pause may continue for over a year until the appeal is settled. The revenue-sharing with current athletes, however, still began July 1.

The athletes appealing the settlement participate in a range of sports, including soccer, volleyball and track. Lexi Drumm, Emma Appleman, Emmie Wannemacher, Riley Haas, Savannah Baron and Elizabeth Arnold are from the College of Charleston, with Kacie Breeding from Vanderbilt and Kate Johnson from Virginia also joining the appeal. The eight women say that 90% of the allotted $2.8 billion will go to football and men’s basketball — depriving the nation’s women’s programs of an estimated $1.1 billion.

“We support a settlement of the case, but not an inaccurate one that violates federal law. The calculation of past damages is based on an error that ignores Title IX and deprives female athletes of $1.1 billion,” Ashlyn Hare, one of the attorneys representing the athletes, said. “Paying out the money as proposed would be a massive error that would cause irreparable harm to women’s sports.”

Riley Haas (25) is one of the soccer players from Charleston suing for equity

The court ruling could take several months or longer, but with a victory over SFA, female student-athletes have reason to still be hopeful. Title IX isn’t fully gone yet, and with women’s sports growing in popularity, fair revenue could well be on the way.

Until then, football will retain the majority of revenue-sharing at most universities.

If the Trump administration continues to push NIL and college athletics from the jurisdiction of Title IX, the funding for women’s sports will continue to decrease in favor of programs that bring in more revenue.

Less funding means worse facilities, coaches, recruits and visibility, resulting in less success and less attention from audiences. A cycle like this has the ability to destroy a program, especially because women’s sports aren’t afforded the initial exposure and investments that men’s sports have held for years.

Luckily, in the SFA plaintiffs’ case, Title IX protections aren’t gone just yet.