Teachers and coaches who suffer reprisals for complaining about illegal sex discrimination against their students will be able to sue their school districts for damages, under a ruling by a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court. The 5-4 ruling held that the federal law that bars discrimination based on sex in federally financed education programs gives people the right to sue if they suffer retaliation for alleging that the law is being broken. It came in a case brought by Roderick L. Jackson, a high school girls' basketball coach who sued the Birmingham, Alabama, school district in 2001. Hailed by advocates as a major victory for female equality and for civil rights more broadly, the court's March 29 ruling in "Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education" (Case No. 02-1672) was seen by some experts as a new source of legal headaches for school districts. The ruling establishes that the private right to sue under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 extends to claims of retaliation for complaints about violations of the statute, even if the plaintiffs are not the direct victims of the sex discrimination they report.