the government. It was stated specifically on the Department of Education website as, "No person in the US, on the basis of sex, can be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance". The leading cause which led to the start of more public schools having single-sex classes or entire schools was when the reforms to the Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 were passed in 2006. Initially, Title IX had allowed the separation of males and females in certain areas in school before the new changes. For example, they were allowed to have single-gender classes for physical education when contact sports were involved and sex-education classes. Kasic (2008) indicates that the new regulations allow nonvocational public schools to receive funding if they offer single-sex classes or entire single-sex schools, but to start these programs, they have to have a governmental or educational objective. These programs must also be voluntary, so public schools cannot be required to offer these single-sex programs. If they do, they cannot force students to participate in them. Diana Schemo explains in a New York Times article, "Until now, public school districts that offered a school to one sex generally had to provide a comparable school for students of the other sex. However, the new rules say districts can offer such students the option to attend comparable coeducational schools" (Schemo, 2006, p. 2). Since these regulations were approved, the number of public schools offering single-sex programs has been steadily increasing because the rules are more flexible. In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of single-sex public education in the 1996 case of United States v. Virginia. This ruling, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concluded that single-sex education in the public sector is constitutional only if comparable courses, services, and facilities are made available to both sexes. The No Child Left Behind Act contains provisions (sections 5131.a.23. and 5131c, 20 U.S.C. section 7215(a)(23), and section 7215(c)) designed by their authors—senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)—to facilitate single-sex education in public schools. These provisions led to the publication of new federal rules in October 2006 to allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes provided that 1) enrollment is voluntary and 2) comparable courses, services, and facilities are available to both