East Carolina women’s swimming, tennis threaten Title IX lawsuit over sport cuts
Members of the East Carolina women’s swimming and diving and women’s tennis teams, two of the four sports the school announced in May it would cut for financial reasons, are threatening a class-action lawsuit, alleging the cuts violate Title IX.
Arthur Bryant, a lawyer with the Oakland, Calif., law firm Bailey Glasser, sent ECU Interim Chancellor Ron Mitchelson a letter Monday that said eliminating the teams is a “flagrant violation” of Title IX, the federal statute governing gender equity.
The letter says East Carolina’s student body is 57% female, but scholarships are roughly allocated 50-50 between men and women. One of the three ways schools can satisfy Title IX is by proportional representation of scholarship opportunities.
“Based on these facts, unless ECU agrees to reinstate the women’s teams or has some plans for compliance with Title IX we do not yet know, we will seek a preliminary injunction immediately preserving the teams,” the letter reads. It asks the university to respond by Thursday.
Bryant represented Brown female athletes in a seminal 1991 lawsuit that lasted seven years and went as far as the U.S. Supreme Court and led to Brown not only retaining the sports it planned to cut but promoting several club sports to varsity status. Bryant also represented William & Mary athletes this summer when that university announced it would cut seven sports. The cuts were eventually reversed and the athletic director resigned amid a campus uproar.
Bryant, in a telephone interview Monday, said the sport cuts were “a clear and fairly blatant violation of Title IX.”
“As is our standard policy, the university doesn’t comment on pending, or in this case threatened, litigation so I have nothing further to provide at this time,” an East Carolina spokesperson wrote in an email.
In May, when the school announced it no longer would sponsor men’s or women’s tennis or men’s or women’s swimming and diving, athletic director Jon Gilbert cited “financial realities,” noting, “We cannot support 20 sports at East Carolina.”
An internal analysis by the university found a $10 million deficit within the athletic department that began with the struggles of the football program and was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Gilbert said the discontinued programs lost $2.6 million in the past year, with the university unable to pay for necessary facility upgrades in the near future, although one economist’s analysis indicated the four programs likely made money for the university itself through tuition payments. East Carolina also implemented 10 to 20% budget cuts throughout the athletic department.
In May, Gilbert said the university worked with a Title IX consultant to ensure East Carolina remained in compliance with the federal gender-equity statute, even though the university cut three more women’s scholarships than men’s.
The letter asks for Gilbert to explain how East Carolina meets the proportionality clause of Title IX. The two other ways schools can comply with Title IX — expanding opportunities for female athletes and fully accommodating the interests of female students with sufficient athletic opportunities — do not appear to apply in this case.
“The goal here is to get East Carolina University to reinstate the women’s teams it is canceling in violation of Title IX and have the school get into compliance with Title IX,” Bryant said. “It’s a federal law. They’re supposed to follow it and it’s the right thing to do.”
Other universities in the Carolinas have also cut sports recently.: Appalachian State cut men’s tennis, men’s soccer and men’s indoor track and field. Clemson cut men’s track and field and cross country, and Winthrop cut men’s and women’s tennis.
This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 7:02 PM with the headline "East Carolina women’s swimming, tennis threaten Title IX lawsuit over sport cuts."
