In a landmark decision with broad implications for college athletic programs across the U.S., a federal judge ruled last Wednesday that Brown University had discriminated against female athletes when administrators withdrew funding for women's gymnastics and volleyball teams in 1991.

Brown was found to have violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal statute that forbids sex discrimination by schools that receive any federal funds.

Female athletes filed the class-action lawsuit in 1992 against Brown following the demotion of the full-varsity teams to "donor-funded" status. Donor-funded teams are supported only by private donations.

"This is a strong reaffirmation of our interpretation of Title IX," said Leslie A. Brueckner, co-counsel for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, a public advocacy firm that represented the plaintiffs. "It shows that courts are not going to sit back and tolerate blatant violations of this statute."

In a 69-page ruling, Judge Raymond J. Pettine of the U.S. District Court in Providence, R.I. ruled that Brown had failed three tests of compliance with Title IX.

"At Brown, far more male athletes are being supported at the university-funded varsity level than are female athletes, and thus, women receive less benefit from their intercollegiate varsity program as a whole than do men," Pettine wrote.

The precedent-setting decision may have wide-ranging ramifications for other schools. Faced with budget cuts, schools may have to reconsider cuts to women's sports programs and eliminate men's teams instead. For instance, Cornell cut its men's gymnastics and fencing teams in 1993.

The decision also opens the way for new legal challenges. Since 1992, several institutions have faced Title IX athletic-discrimination suits, including Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the Kentucky High School Athletic Association.

Many schools will have to re-examine whether they offer equal opportunities for participation in sports to women and men.

Brown, which was forced to reinstate women's gymnastics and volleyball shortly after the suit was filed in 1992, has 16 men's and 17 women's varsity teams, as well as a co-ed golf team. Although women are 51 percent of Brown's student body, they represent only 38 percent of its approximately 800 varsity athletes.

But Brown plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, according to Mark M. Nickel, director of the Brown news bureau.

"The irony is that Brown, with the possible exception of Harvard, has probably thebiggest and one of the best programs in women'sathletics in the country," Nickel said.

Throughout the three-month trial last fall,Brown's attorneys presented a dozen studiesarguing that women's interests and abilities insports were less than men's, which would justifylower female participation in athletic programs.

"The university believed it demonstrated incourt that interest and ability is not evenlydistributed between men and women," Nickel said.

But Brueckner said Brown's policies only serveto perpetuate past discrimination against women.

"It may be that there's less relative interestand ability on the part of women, but that ismerely a function of social discrimination,"Brueckner said, "and the goal of Title IX is toprovide equality of treatment so that interest andability can grow."