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U.S. District judge Stefan Underhill will determine if a case brought against Quinnipiac University by the head coach and five members of the school's volleyball team is a case of the school engaging in gender discrimination.

In 2009, Quinnipiac cut its volleyball team in favor of a competitive cheer team. The move was done, they argued, to provide more athletic opportunities to women at a lower cost to the university. According to Quinnipiac, each of the 11 spots on the volleyball team cost the school $6,300. The 30 spots on the cheer team cost only $1,250 each, meaning the school saves over $20,000 by making the move.

Underhill issued a temporary injunction preventing the school from disbanding the volleyball squad. At the center of the case is the question of whether cheerleading is a sport and can be counted under Title IX compliance regulations.

In February, 2009, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that cheerleading was a contact sport, although that case centered on whether a cheerleader was liable for an injury suffered by a teammate and if the coach was liable for a lack of supervision.

In the Quinnipiac case, Jeff Webb, a former cheerleader who heads the Universal Cheerleading Association and is chairman of several cheerleading groups, and renowned Title IX expert Donna Lopiano, former CEO of the Women's Sports Foundation, contended that cheerleading does not meet the definition of a sport.

"I do not believe any school can count [cheerleading] as a sport," Lopiano said in her testimony. "It hasn't evolved enough. In the future it could, but not as it exists today. It's not a sport. It's not even close."

According to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights there are five main factors that go into determining if an activity is a sport:
• That selection for the team is based on objective factors primarily relating to athletic ability
• Whether the activity has a defined season
• Whether it's administered by the athletic department
• Is the primary purpose is athletic competition
• Does the team prepare for and engage in competition the same way other teams in the athletic department do.

The volleyball players claim the move to drop their sport was another instance where Quinnipiac discriminated against women, saying a men's team would never be dropped for a cheer squad. They also accuse the school of manipulating rosters in order to comply with the "proportionality" prong of Title IX.

According to their claim, the same female runner is counted three times if she participates in cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track. Additionally, they say the school's baseball and men's lacrosse teams would drop players before the reporting date and reinstate them after compliance reports had been submitted. The softball team would add players to its roster prior to the reporting date and those players would not be on the team when the season began.

There have been other recent cases of colleges failing to comply with Title IX. In December, 2009, Slippery Rock University was ordered to make additional funding available to women's teams after it was ruled it was not following through with the terms of a 2007 settlement. And in February, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a lawsuit brought against University of California-Davis by three female wrestlers who claimed they were forced to wrestle against males in the same weight class.

On Thursday the Contra Costa Community College District reinstated six Diablo Valley College teams in order to resolve a gender bias complaint. The district has until July 2013 to prove the three colleges in the district are in compliance with Title IX. In exchange, the OCR will drop its review of the schools.

Patrick Bohn is an Assistant Editor at Athletic Management.