## Facts

- Pierce City Junior High offered an eighth-grade boys’ tackle football team and a girls’ volleyball team.
- Nichole Force, a 13-year-old eighth-grade student, asked to try out for the boys’ football team.
- The school board considered the request at least twice and unanimously denied it solely because Force was female.
- Board members believed Force could likely participate safely and might be a good player, but still refused to allow a tryout.
- Defendants asserted two main reasons: (1) preserving separate boys’ and girls’ teams to maximize girls’ participation (including concerns boys would dominate girls’ volleyball), and (2) safety concerns for girls in tackle football.
- Force sued the school district, superintendent, and principal under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and sought injunctive relief.
- The Missouri State High School Activities Association intervened to defend application of its rule permitting separate-sex teams for contact sports.

## Issues

1. Whether a public school violates the Equal Protection Clause by categorically prohibiting a female student from trying out for a boys’ contact-sport team solely because of sex.
2. Whether asserted objectives (student safety, maximizing female participation, and compliance with Title IX and association rules) provide an important governmental objective substantially related to the sex-based exclusion.

## Decision

- The court held that excluding Force from trying out for football solely because she was female violated the Equal Protection Clause.
- Applying intermediate scrutiny, the court found defendants failed to show the categorical exclusion was substantially related to an important governmental objective.
- The court concluded Title IX contact-sport regulations were permissive, not a mandate to segregate, and did not supply a constitutional justification.
- The court rejected the participation-maximization rationale as speculative and unsupported by evidence in the record.
- The court found the safety rationale overbroad and grounded in generalizations, especially given Force’s demonstrated capability and the uneven application of “safety” to male players.
- The court granted injunctive relief requiring defendants to allow Force to compete for a position on the football team on the same basis as male students.

## Legal Principles

- Sex-based classifications by public schools are subject to intermediate scrutiny: the government must show an important governmental objective and a means substantially related to achieving it.
- Objectives resting on fixed assumptions about male and female abilities, or “protective” exclusions based on presumed inferiority, do not satisfy equal protection requirements.
- Title IX regulations allowing separate teams for contact sports do not require exclusion of girls from boys’ teams and do not displace constitutional equal protection analysis.
- Generalized safety concerns cannot justify a blanket sex-based ban where individualized assessment or less discriminatory alternatives are feasible.
- Athletic-association rules cannot override the Fourteenth Amendment when they conflict with constitutional protections.

## Conclusion

The court ordered the school to permit a female eighth-grade student to try out for the boys’ football team, holding that a categorical, sex-based exclusion unsupported by evidence and grounded in broad generalizations fails intermediate-scrutiny review under the Equal Protection Clause.


Force ex rel. Force v. Pierce City R-VI Sch. Dist., 570 F. Supp. 1020 (W.D. Mo. 1983)