Quinnipiac University has failed to prove it has stopped violating Title IX. U.S. District Court Judge Stefan R. Underhill ruled in an opinion released late Monday that Quinnipiac failed to demonstrate that it provides equal opportunities for its female athletes, and therefore denied the university's motion to lift an injunction that prevents it from cutting its women's varsity volleyball team.
"This decision not only continues to protect the opportunities for female athletes at Quinnipiac, it provides guidance for colleges and universities across the country that equal athletic opportunity for women means equivalent and meaningful opportunities for real competition," said Sandra Staub, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.
In 2009 the university announced plans to eliminate the volleyball team and the ACLU of Connecticut filed suit on behalf of the university's female athletes with cooperating attorneys Jonathan Orleans and Alex Hernandez of Pullman & Comley, LLC, and Kristen Galles of Equity Legal. In 2010, Underhill ruled in the plaintiffs' favor, ordering the university to stop discriminating against female athletes and to maintain the women's varsity volleyball team until it can prove compliance with Title IX, which requires that universities receiving federal funds provide equal athletic participation opportunities for men and women. In August 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld that ruling, point by point.
The latest ruling rejects the university's argument that since the 2010 decision it has satisfied the requirements of Title IX by adding sports teams for women. Judge Underhill found that two of the new teams - the competitive cheer team, renamed "acrobatics and tumbling," and the women's rugby team - don't provide team members with competitive opportunities equivalent to those offered to men.
"At most, the University has shown that it has made some progress toward the goal of effective accommodation, but those modest adjustments over the past two years have brought only incremental improvements in gender equity, not full and lasting compliance with Title IX," Underhill wrote.
“It is particularly significant that the court did more than determine which male and female athletes could be counted for purposes of Title IX,” said cooperating attorney Jonathan Orleans of Pullman & Comley. “The court went on to analyze the quality of competition offered to men’s teams and women’s teams, and found that women at Quinnipiac were not, on the whole, provided with competitive opportunities equivalent to those provided to men. This is one of very few, if not the only, court decisions to address this particular aspect of Title IX’s requirements.”
Added cooperating attorney Alex Hernandez of Pullman & Comley, “This decision recognizes what student athletes have always known, in sports, close enough is not enough.”
"Donna Lopiano and Judy Sweet served as valuable expert witnesses in the case," said Kristen Galles, who has litigated Title IX cases since the early 1990s. "Hopefully, schools will now realize that they must provide their female athletes with comparable opportunities with comparable competition."
