Female Student-Athletes File Title IX Class Action Against Fresno State After Women’s Lacrosse Team Gets Axed

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A group of female Fresno State student-athletes have filed a proposed class action over the university’s elimination of the varsity women’s lacrosse team for the 2020-2021 academic year. 

Five plaintiffs allege in the 36-page lawsuit that California State University Fresno and the school’s athletics director, former president and interim president have historically and continually violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 by depriving female student-athletes of equal opportunities to participate, as well as equal treatment and athletic aid, and by “treating the women’s lacrosse team far worse than other varsity intercollegiate athletic teams” since making the announcement to cut the program via email in mid-October 2020. 

“The decision to eliminate the women’s lacrosse team was entirely consistent with Fresno State’s history of sex discrimination in its intercollegiate athletic program, but it came as a surprise to the women on the team and their coaches,” the suit alleges. 

In a footnote, the lawsuit says Fresno State has “a long history of sex discrimination” within its intercollegiate athletic program, a resumé that includes millions of dollars in jury verdicts, large settlements with woman over alleged sexual discrimination and retaliation, and repeated U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights investigations over nearly 25 years. 

The plaintiffs aim to secure injunctive relief to require the defendants to treat the women’s lacrosse team and its members “at least as well as other varsity teams and their members” during the 2020-2021 school year, preserve the women’s lacrosse team into this school year and beyond, and provide female student-athletes and potential student-athletes in Fresno State’s intercollegiate athletic program with the participation, financial aid and treatment protections afforded by Title IX.  

Under Title IX, Fresno State, as an institution that receives “substantial” federal funding, is required to provide equal opportunities in athletics without regard to sex, according to the complaint. The university, the plaintiffs say, has fallen well short of its responsibilities. 

In particular, Fresno State has allegedly failed to: 

• Provide female student-athletes with opportunities at a rate that is “substantially proportionate” to their undergraduate full-time enrollment rate;
• Demonstrate a “history and continuing practice of program expansion responsive to the interests and abilities of the sex that has been historically underrepresented”; and
• Show that the “interests and abilities of the historically underrepresented sex have been fully and effectively accommodated.” 

“The elimination of the women’s lacrosse team continued and exacerbated Fresno State’s failure to satisfy these requirements and violated Title IX,” the plaintiffs allege. 

As the lawsuit tells it, the plaintiffs’ counsel sent the defendants a letter on December 3, 2020 in which concerns were expressed regarding the cutting of the women’s lacrosse team and why the elimination of the team violates Title IX. The letter requested a dialogue with the university about the continuation of the women’s lacrosse program and voluntary Title IX compliance, the suit adds. 

Over the next month, however, the defendants “delayed responding several times and ultimately informed Plaintiffs’ counsel that they believed Fresno State was complying with Title IX, so there was no need to talk or meet,” the complaint reads. What has allegedly followed in the wake of Fresno State’s axing of the women’s lacrosse team is treatment that the plaintiffs describe as “far worse than other intercollegiate athletic varsity teams and their members”: 

“For example, Fresno State excluded the women’s lacrosse team from athletic facilities and its locker room. The team members were not even allowed to enter the locker room to retrieve their personal belongings.”

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Fresno State women’s lacrosse team was not provided with a promised return-to-play plan, which would have allowed the team to practice and train during the fall off-season, even though such plans were provided to other teams, the lawsuit says. 

“Instead, it was left waiting for months, until just a few weeks ago when the team’s season began,” the case reads, claiming the plaintiffs and their teammates were “forced to use outdated gear,” were not provided “proper practice jerseys or gear that designate the team’s sport,” were limited in their participation at media day, and were not issued cold-weather gear until after the season had begun. 

None of the forgoing treatment is surprising to the Fresno State women’s lacrosse team, as the university has “consistently failed” to provide the team with the same treatment as their male counterparts, the case claims: 

“As just one example, women’s lacrosse did not have a designated field for off-season practice. Instead, it shared a field with the women’s soccer team that doubled as the ‘tailgating parking lot’ during fall football games. On Mondays, before the women’s lacrosse team could begin practice, it had to clean the field, which was often covered with bottle caps, glass, food, and other trash.”

Over the last several years, the lawsuit goes on, the women’s lacrosse team has barely had a proper coaching staff, with the team’s head coach position left unposted and unfilled for months. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all present and future women students and potential students at Fresno State who participate, seek to participate, and/or are deterred from participating in intercollegiate athletics at the university. 

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