Carol Rose California Superior Court Judge (Ret)

The Origin of Girls' and Womens' Equality in Sports (Title IX)

Bio of Hon. Carol Rose

Judge Rose began her legal career on the steps of the University of Florida Law School library.
She was an undergraduate math major who became fascinated with law when her law student
(male) friends argued cases and legal theories with each other. All those years ago, in the
South, women were not welcome in law schools. She was not permitted inside the law school
or its library but devoured law books that were loaned to her. Becoming a lawyer was not an
option in those days for a woman in the south. This left her to set a path for another passion to
be realized, studying to be a mathematics professor (topology, to be specific).
She graduated at the top of her class, Summa Cum Laude and began her Ph.D. in math at
University of Massachusetts. New Englanders were more enlightened than Southerners and it
was while studying for her Ph.D. that she realized she, a woman, could be a lawyer. She started
law school in New England (foregoing her career as a mathematics professor); there were only
16 women out of 185 in her law class.
She completed her legal education at Stanford Law School, (40 out of 140 women), focusing her
studies on women’s legal issues. Her first book was published while in law school, “Women in
Sport, From Myth to Reality”, a treatise about the ERA and women’s sport. She later taught
Title IX (Discrimination in Education) and Trial Advocacy at UCLA and Loyola Law Schools, resp.
In 1981, she was offered the position Under Secretary of Education to manage Title IX
enforcement throughout the county.
Judge Rose, upon completing law school, became a Century City entertainment litigator,
handling cases for celebrities (The Beachboys, Chicago, etc.). While at her law firm, in 1978, her
first book (“Women in Sports: From Myth to Reality”), was recognized by the trail blazing
women fighting for equal treatment; that led to the most important case of her legal career, a
Title IX class action in Federal District Court, that case changed the course of high school girls’
athletics giving them equality for the first time in California history in 1979.
Judge Rose’s dream to “do justice” every day in a courtroom became a reality when she
engaged in a 34-year career as a criminal prosecutor (Deputy District Attorney) for LA County.
She specialized in child molestation and rape. She prosecuted hundreds of felons with
sentences such as a three-defendant case who were sentenced to a total of over 1000 years
plus 41 life sentences in prison in one trial, serial rapists.
After prosecuting predominantly murderers and sexual child molesters and rapists, Judge Rose
developed a new means to “do justice” when she became a Superior Court Judge, presiding
over cases, as many as 100+ per day, in which she encountered people who sought justice in
her courtroom. She ended her judicial career presiding over small claims and is grateful to have
had the opportunity to affect the lives of thousands of citizens in her role as a judge.