Page:Veronica Ollier v. Sweetwater Union High School District (September 19, 2014) US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.djvu/36

 complaints he made on Plaintiffs’ behalf. With their softball coach fired, Plaintiffs’ prospects for competing were hampered. Stated another way, Plaintiffs’ Title IX retaliation claim seeks to vindicate not Coach Martinez’s rights, but Plaintiffs’ own rights. Because Plaintiffs were asserting their own “legal rights and interests,” not a claim of their coach, the generally strict limitations on third-party standing do not bar their claim. See Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499 (1975).

Justice O’Connor correctly said that “teachers and coaches &hellip; are often in the best position to vindicate the rights of their students because they are better able to identify discrimination and bring it to the attention of administrators. Indeed, sometimes adult employees are the only effective adversaries of discrimination in schools.” ''Jackson v. Birmingham Bd. of Educ''., 544 U.S. 167, 181 (2005) (alteration and internal quotation marks omitted). Sweetwater’s position—that Plaintiffs lack standing because it was not they who made the Title IX complaints—would allow any school facing a Title IX retaliation suit brought by students who did not themselves make Title IX complaints to insulate itself simply by firing (or otherwise silencing) those who made the Title IX complaints on the students’ behalf. We will “not assume that Congress left such a gap” in Title IX’s enforcement scheme. Id.

An injured party may sue under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 551 et seq., if he “falls within the ‘zone of interests’ sought to be protected by the statutory provision whose violation forms the legal basis for his complaint.” ''Thompson v. N. Am. Stainless, LP'', 131 S. Ct. 863, 870 (2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). Plaintiffs, of course, do not bring their suit under the APA,