united-states law-in-fiction
Would it be legal to forbid Superman from participating in college sports?
<p>Suppose Kal-El, son of Jor-El, living under the assume identity Clark Kent, decides to spend some time as a professional athlete.</p>
<p>Suppose he reveals his true identity.  Obviously most professional athletes protest that this is unfair and actually mostly pointless because he can outperform entire teams of athletes to amazing fits and set new unbeatable records.</p>
<p>Clark Kent, however, does not relent.  He insists that he should have the same right to participate in sports and (for example) earn a college scholarship if he wants to play on a sport team for his college team.</p>
<p>Is there anything in the <strong>current</strong> law which would allow a college to deny him the right to make a certain sport essentially irrelevant by playing it?</p>
<p>While I am asking the question in jest, I also ask that you, please, support your answers with links (or at least quotes) of the relevant rules, laws and regulations.</p>
<p>For the purposes of this question, let's assume that the question of Kal-El's citizenship has been legally settled based on the fact that his adopted parents adopted him legally.  Let's assume the courts have settled this issue, at least for this one individual.</p>

<p>Let's assume the college receives some amount of federal funding, because quite a lot of them do.  Let's also assume that Superman is considered to be a natural person for legal purposes—that is, he has all the rights a human would—so that his case isn't going to get dismissed on that ground.</p>
<h3>Superman's best bet would be to allege race discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S. Code § 2000d)</h3>
<p><a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000d" rel="noreferrer">That law</a> states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For obvious reasons, there's no precedent on whether a non-<em>homo sapiens</em> species of intelligent humanoid aliens is a &quot;race&quot; for civil rights purposes.  However it seems like a reasonable argument could be made that it would be.  For one thing, in terms of plain meaning, the term is extremely common to describe such beings (1.7 million+ hits on a web search for &quot;alien races&quot;—as one relevant example, Wikipedia has a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alien_races_in_Marvel_Comics" rel="noreferrer">List of alien races in Marvel Comics</a>), and it would be a straightforward way to incorporate them into existing anti-discrimination law.  Since <a href="https://superman.fandom.com/wiki/Kryptonians" rel="noreferrer">all Kryptonians gain superpowers on earth</a>, discriminating against him on the basis of his superior abilities would be, in effect, discrimination due to his Kryptonian race.</p>
<p>A less compelling, but still plausible, argument might be that this is national origin discrimination under the same law (based on the fact that they're discriminating based on his being from Krypton).</p>
