Federal Title IX Class Action Lawsuit Against Guilford College Settled by Public Consent Decree
By order of United States District Judge William L. Osteen, Jr., 14 current and former student athletes settled, by public consent decree, a federal Title IX class action complaint against the North Carolina school. Filed in 2017, the suit alleged that Guilford College systematically discriminated against female athletes and coaches of female athletes. The case was brought on behalf of the plaintiffs by Duffy Law, LLC in New Haven, CT.
NEW HAVEN, Conn., July 30, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- By order of United States District Judge William L. Osteen, Jr., 14 current and former student athletes settled, by public consent decree, a federal Title IX class action complaint against the North Carolina school. Filed in 2017, the suit alleged that Guilford College systematically discriminated against female athletes and coaches of female athletes. The case was brought on behalf of the plaintiffs by Duffy Law, LLC in New Haven, CT.
Under the consent decree, Guilford agreed to add varsity sports teams; allocate additional monies to certain women's sports; develop policies to ensure equitable funding and treatment for both male and female athletes and varsity teams, and create an Equity in Athletics Committee ("EAC") to oversee and assist the school in achieving gender equity. The consent decree is unusual in that Guilford College and the plaintiffs have agreed to work together to reach gender equity at the school. Two of the plaintiffs will participate as members of the EAC for the next five years and will assist the Guilford in hosting a conference for women athletes to promote gender equity in athletics.
Click to download the consent decree: http://www.duffylawct.com/guilford college
The current and former Guilford coaches and students alleged that while more than 50% of the undergraduate student body is female, Guilford provides male athletes about 20% more opportunity to participate in its athletic programming. The suit further alleged that Guilford provides superior benefits and treatment to its male athletes with respect to the provision of equipment and supplies; scheduling of games and practice time; travel and per diem allowance; opportunity to receive coaching and academic tutoring; assignment and compensation of coaches and tutors; provision of locker rooms, practice and competitive facilities; provision of medical and training services; provision of housing and dining facilities and services; and publicity.
The complainants alleged that despite the fact that Guilford provides the same number of teams for females as males, it spends significantly less overall for women's sports than for men's sports. They allege, for example, that in 2016, the school: (1) spent $41,000.00 to recruit male athletes and $13,613.00 to recruit female athletes; (2) spent $669,772.00 for operating game-day expenses for men's teams and $213,985.00 for women's teams; and (3) spent a total of $1,358,127.00 on men's teams and $630,591.00 on women's teams.
Even though Title IX has been the law since 1972, and athletic participation rates have significantly increased since its enactment, girls and women do not yet have equal opportunities in all areas of athletics. Currently, high schools are providing 1.3 million fewer chances for girls to play sports as compared to boys, and girls' opportunities still have not reached the rates afforded boys when Title IX was passed. Even though more than half of all students at NCAA schools are women, they receive only 44% of the athletic participation opportunities, and as of 2012 (40 years after the passage of Title IX) women still had over 60,000 fewer participation opportunities than their male counterparts at NCAA schools. At the typical top-level athletic schools in Division I-FBS (formerly Division I-A), female athletes receive about 28% of the total money spent on athletics, 31% of the recruiting dollars, and 42% of the athletic scholarship dollars.
The case was brought in the Middle District of North Carolina federal court on behalf of the plaintiffs by Duffy Law, LLC in New Haven, CT. Attorney Felice Duffy is a pioneer in both U.S. women's soccer and in Title IX. She filed a Title IX action against the University of Connecticut as an undergraduate in 1978 to compel the funding of a women's varsity soccer team. Her success launched the UCONN women's team as a perennial powerhouse with 27 NCAA tournament appearances and seven College Cup Titles. Duffy was a D-1 All-American, a member of first U.S. National Team, and the first woman to earn the international Scottish coaching license. She went on to become head coach of the Yale women's soccer team for 10 years before going to Quinnipiac law school, where she graduated first in her class.
Robert Ekstrand, from Ekstrand & Ekstrand LLC in Durham, North Carolina, served as a local counsel.
After stints at major NY and CT law firms, and two federal clerkships (one of which was with the Honorable Stefan R. Underhill who was the presiding judge in the 2009 Biediger v. Quinnipiac University lawsuit which found the school had violated Title IX in its athletic programming), Duffy became an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Connecticut and prosecuted cases in both the Violent Crimes and Major Crimes units. She also served as Outreach Coordinator for the District, and in that role trained numerous local and campus law enforcement and college athletic personnel on sexual assault prevention and compliance with Title IX. She opened her own firm in 2015 focusing on Title IX violations for athletics, sexual misconduct, and serious Conduct Code Violations at schools, and has represented more than 100 students and staff across the country.
The entire case record is available online with a subscription to Pacer.gov or PacerMonitor.com, a Federal District Court Monitoring service, by searching for: 1:17-cv-932
SOURCE Duffy Law, LLC
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