By Amanda Swanson and Bill Haltom
It was a game changing lawsuit-literally. And even though it took place in a courtroom instead of on a basketball court, it turned out to be one of the legendary coach Pat Summitt's greatest victories.
In 1976, 15-year-old Victoria Cape tried out for and made the Oak Ridge High School girls basketball team. It was her first step toward achieving her father's dream that she would someday play college basketball just like he did. But in taking that first step, Victoria could not step past the half-court line. The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) had different rules for high school women's players than for men, because the men in charge insisted it was dangerous for a woman to run the full length of a basketball court. Instead, the women played six-on-six basketball: three forwards stayed on one side of the court to play offense, and three guards stayed on the other side of the court to play defense. No fast breaks. No point guards. In fact, a guard could go her whole career without ever taking a shot.
Victoria's father, James Cape, wrote the TSSAA a letter, urging them to revoke the archaic rule and let Victoria, her teammates, and girls across the state race pass the half-court line and play a full-court game. The TSSAA said no. James Cape then contacted two young lawyers in Oak Ridge, Ann Mostoller and Dorothy Stulberg. Both were recent graduates of the University of Tennessee Law School with outstanding academic records, and yet because they were women, they had to start their own law firm. None of the existing firms in the area would hire them.
Mostoller and Stulberg launched a legal full court press on behalf of Victoria and high school players across the Volunteer State. They filed a lawsuit under Title IX (enacted by Congress just four years earlier) and the 14th Amendment in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, seeking a mandatory injunction against the TSSAA that would force them to allow women to play basketball by the same rules as men. The case was assigned to Judge Robert Taylor, a famously colorful jurist. By all reports, Judge Taylor loved the case because it brought together two of his loves: the law and athletics. The Judge played both college basketball and baseball during his undergraduate years at Milligan College.
It was a hotly contested trial, featuring expert witnesses on both sides. But the star witness testified on behalf of Victoria: a young college basketball coach named Pat Head. She was only 24 years old and was trying to build a women's program at the University of Tennessee in the college game that had only fairly recently gone to full-court rules. In her testimony, the young coach asserted that women could play full-court basketball. But as a damages' expert, she also prophesied that because of Title IX, young women in the coming years would win college athletic scholarships, opening doors of opportunity for future generations. She explained to the court that Victoria Cape and hundreds of young women across Tennessee would be denied this opportunity as they could never develop the skills necessary to win a college basketball scholarship when they were confined to just half the playing field.
On the basis of the young coach's testimony, Judge Taylor ruled in favor of Victoria Cape and ordered the TSSAA to allow high school girls to cross half court. The TSSAA then sent the case into overtime, appealing Judge Taylor's decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which eventually reversed Judge Taylor. The panel for the appeals court found that TSSAA had no intent to discriminate, and that there was a rational relationship for different rules for men's and women's basketball given the different physical characteristics of men and women.
Judge Taylor was clearly unhappy with the Sixth Circuit, and openly encouraged Mostoller and Stulberg to seek an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Stulberg took another approach, filing a civil rights complaint against the Oak Ridge School System with the U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare (HEW). After an investigation, HEW found the Oak Ridge Schools were indeed in violation of Title IX for the disparate treatment of male and female student athletes, and outlined a series of changes the school system needed to make.
The TSSAA's first response was to dig its heels in even deeper, refusing to make any of the ordered changes. But while the HEW couldn't seem to get traction, the TSSAA eventually met its match in Pat Head, who made a decision from which there could be no appeal. In March of 1979, she announced that until the TSSAA changed its rules and allowed Tennessee's young women to play full-court basketball, she would no longer recruit athletes from within the state to play for the Lady Vols. Within weeks, the TSSAA voted to allow high school girls to cross the half-court line.
