A California state senator may introduce legislation next year to force universities there to offer more athletics opportunities to women, the Contra Costa Times reports today.

In a hearing Friday at the University of California at Berkeley, Sen. Dean Florez, a Democrat, said the university system’s history of gender-discrimination lawsuits and settlements showed it had not worked hard enough to comply with Title IX. Legislators are likely to propose laws to solve deficiencies, he said.

Karen Moe Humphreys, a former UC-Berkeley coach who recently settled a discrimination suit against the university, said that earlier this decade its Title IX compliance “had been reduced to hoping we didn’t get sued.”

UC administrators said that the lack of national competition was hampering their efforts to offer more women’s teams. The university’s president, Robert C. Dynes, told the senator the university plans to hire a systemwide Title IX compliance officer this year.

Mr. Florez, who convened the Senate Select Committee on Gender Discrimination last month, held a similar hearing in Sacramento focused on the California State University system. —Jennifer K. Ruark