The U.S. women’s soccer team has asked the judge in its gender-discrimination case against the U.S. Soccer Federation to enter a final ruling on its pay claims in an effort to speed up an appeal.
The players on Friday asked U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner of the Central District of California to enter a final judgment on their Equal Pay Act and Title VII pay-discrimination claims. That would allow the players to appeal to the Ninth Circuit and “could accelerate the ultimate resolution of this dispute,” the players’ attorneys wrote in the 12-page motion.
In a separate filing Friday the players moved to stay the June 16 trial, which already was pushed back six weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic, pending resolution of the motion and of any appeal. If Friday’s motion is denied, the plaintiffs asked for the court to set a trial date for a few months out, “at a time that is practicable in light of Covid-19 restrictions,” the motion said.
U.S. Soccer didn’t oppose Friday’s motion, but doesn’t necessarily agree with the plaintiffs’ assertion that there was no overlap between the claims being appealed and the ones remaining, according to a footnote in the motion. A U.S. Soccer spokesman declined additional comment.
On May 1, Judge Klausner threw out the players’ pay-discrimination claims, saying they hadn’t provided sufficient evidence to justify their inclusion at trial. In that decision, he wrote that the women collectively had been paid slightly more per game than the U.S. men’s soccer team between 2015-2019, and that the women had through collective bargaining chosen steadier pay over the U.S. men’s pay-per-game setup, which had a higher financial upside.
During that span, the women’s team won the 2015 and 2019 Women’s World Cups while the men’s team didn’t qualify for the 2018 World Cup.
On May 1, Judge Klausner also dismissed the women’s discriminatory working conditions claim with respect to field surfaces it played on. But he allowed to proceed to trial their claims that they’d been subjected to inferior travel conditions (charter flights and hotel accommodations) and personnel and support services (medical and training support).
The pay ruling—which Friday’s motion called “the core of Plaintiffs’ case”—surprised many observers, since tallies for the men’s and women’s differently structured compensation had been hotly contested since the women filed suit on March 8, 2019.
“Equal pay means paying women players the same rate for winning a game as men get paid,” Molly Levinson, a spokeswoman for the players, said in a statement Friday. “The argument that women are paid enough if they make close to the same amount as men while winning more than twice as often is not equal pay.”
The players asserted that without the granting of the motion, “Plaintiffs are faced with the possibility of waiting an extremely prolonged time—after the trial of the remaining claims—for the filing and resolution of an appeal that will determine whether they are collectively entitled to millions of dollars in damages and backpay, and to injunctive relief going forward.”
The motion also argued that without a final resolution on the dismissed equal-pay claims’ status, “it will be exceedingly difficult for the Parties ever to reach a settlement.”
The motion to stay the trial date argued that a delay was warranted to avoid the possibility of having to hold a second trial if the Ninth Circuit reversed Judge Klausner’s pay ruling and allowed those claims to go forward.
“It would be much more efficient, and safer from a health standpoint, to hold a single trial at the conclusion of Plaintiffs’ appeal,” the motion said.