Among the legal questions still swirling around Penn State, one has drawn little attention but could pose a threat to the university: Did the school’s handling of sex abuse allegations against assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky violate the federal Title IX gender discrimination law?

Title IX could be in play because the 40-year-old law — most commonly associated with access for girls and women to sports teams — has become the main framework governing how colleges and universities must respond to reports of sexual assault and ensure a safe learning environment for students.

As Penn State tries to move past the scandal after Sandusky’s trial, the devastating Freeh Report and unprecedented NCAA penalties — the football team opens play Saturday —Title IX is potentially more than a legal afterthought. The reason: Not only have Title IX lawsuits produced some of the most expensive judgments against universities in recent years, but the law allows for the possibility — however unlikely — that a university’s access to all federal dollars could be cut off.

In reality, experts say, it’s unimaginable the feds would impose what some call the “academic death penalty” available under Title IX to shut down research and cripple a university that educates and employs tens of thousands of people — in an election-year battleground state, no less — who had no involvement with the scandal. Nor is Penn State’s accreditation considered in jeopardy despite a recent warning from its accrediting agency.

But while the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has never cut off a college’s access to federal dollars over Title IX compliance, it’s also never seen a case like Penn State, with an alleged conspiracy by top university officials to conceal evidence of sexual assault, and with such destructive consequences.

The Obama administration has been aggressively using Title IX to push colleges and universities to take sexual violence on their campuses more seriously, and laid out detailed requirements on compliance last year. At the very least, OCR faces a tough question: If it won’t make at least partial use of the hammer Congress handed it to enforce Title IX — in a case alleging such flagrant, longstanding and consequential misconduct by top university officials — is it sending a message to other colleges that it never will?

The strong sanctions imposed on Penn State by the NCAA could also pressure the Department of Education to follow with strong medicine.

“In practice, I don’t see how (the NCAA penalty) couldn’t influence their thinking,” said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education. The NCAA’s unprecedented sanctions combined with devastating details of Sandusky’s serial abuse in the Freeh Report “probably raised the stakes for the other actors who will be looking at Penn State.”

Federal student aid (grants and loans) contributed about $700 million to Penn State’s $4.3 billion operating budget last year, and federal research more than $470 million. Losing those annual funds would dwarf the $60 million penalty imposed by the NCAA.