Judge: U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team Member Claims Of Unequal Pay Were Bogus
In dismissing unequal pay claims, Judge found the evidence showed the women’s team made more than the men’s team: “the WNT was paid more on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis than the MNT”
Did you hear the one about how the female soccer players on the U.S. Women’s National Team (WNT) were paid less than the players on the U.S. Men’s National Team (MNT)?
Of course you did, it’s an article of feminist faith and social justice warfare that women always are victims, and no one played victim quite like the female stars on the national soccer team.
After winning the World Cup, Megan Rapinoe used her stardom to claim unequal pay was the most important issue:
Megan Rapinoe could faintly hear the stadium erupt in chants of “equal pay” as she and her teammates prepared to celebrate their World Cup win.
Rapinoe, one of the 28 players who sued the United States Soccer Federation alleging gender discrimination, said it felt like an iconic turning point in history.
“I think we knew that this win … was going to be bigger than soccer. But that moment, I think, just solidified everything,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. “It was like this World Cup win is so much more than what was on the field.” ….
The federal class-action lawsuit against the soccer federation alleges the men’s national team earns more than the women’s team, even though the women play more games and win more matches.
Rapinoe said the issue is about “so much more than the money.”“It’s really more about the investment in the game. Is the investment equal? We’re talking marketing dollars and branding, investment in the youth, investment in the players, investment in the coaching staff. I don’t think that that’s there. I don’t think that that’s ever been there.”She said the men’s side of sports in general is seen as “this exciting opportunity, business opportunity that needs to be invested in.”“The women’s is like, ‘How cheap can we do this while sort of keeping them happy?'” she said.
In March 2020, the women on the team staged a protest on the field over unequal pay.
In a pointed message about unequal pay, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team wore their warmup jerseys inside out during the national anthem before their match against Japan on Wednesday.
When worn inside out, U.S. Soccer Federation’s logo is obscured, but the four stars ― representing each of the team’s World Cup victories ― remain visible.
The players reversed their uniforms back to normal for the game, the final match of the SheBelieves Cup tournament (which they won).
Last year, 28 members of the team filed a lawsuit demanding equal pay and benefits that are offered to the men’s team.
The USWNT has taken the field with their warm up jerseys inside out, hiding the US Soccer crest.
This is in response to the latest legal filings by the US Soccer Federation in the gender discrimination lawsuit filed by 28 US players. (@espnW) pic.twitter.com/BTZgYeeNMD
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 12, 2020
Well that lawsuit now is over, in a very devastating way. After reviewing the evidence submitted by the parties, the judge found that there was no pay discrimination against the women. In fact, the women made more than the men.
The Order (pdf.) throwing out most of the women’s claims goes through the history of the case, the negotiations, the pay packages, and so on. You can read the whole thing if you want to understand how broken sports is, but here’s the heart of the judge’s finding (emphasis added).
The statements offered by Plaintiffs are insufficient to establish a genuine dispute that WNT players are paid at a rate less than the rate paid to MNT players. That USSF agents said WNT players are paid less does not make it true where, as here, Defendant has presented evidence that the WNT was paid more on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis than the MNT.
In sum, Defendant has offered evidence in support of its Motion for Summary Judgment that the WNT has been paid more on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis than the MNT over the class period. In response, Plaintiffs have offered evidence that (1) WNT players are paid lower bonuses for friendlies, World Cup-related games, and other tournaments; (2) WNT players would have made more under the MNT CBA than they did under their own CBA, and; (3) USSF agents made statements to the effect that WNT players are paid less than MNT players. As set forth above, this evidence is insufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact for trial. Accordingly, the Court grants summary judgment to Defendant on Plaintiffs’ EPA claim.
The Court then went through claims relating to ‘working conditions’ and left alive only a narrow set:
For the foregoing reasons, the Court DENIES Plaintiffs’ Motion and GRANTS in part Defendant’s Motion. Plaintiffs’ Title VII claim for discriminatory working conditions survives only insofar as it is based on (1) travel conditions (specifically, charter flights and hotel accommodations), and (2) personnel and support services (specifically, medical and training support).
This is a near total defeat for the female soccer players claiming discriminatin. Most important, the key aspect of the public relations campaign — unequal pay — was found to be factually bogus.
The NY Times summed up the heartbreak:
The judge in the United States women’s soccer team’s equal pay lawsuit rejected the players’ most important claims on Friday, delivering a crushing blow to the team’s four-year legal campaign against the United States Soccer Federation.
The judge, R. Gary Klausner of United States District Court for the Central District of California, accepted the federation’s argument in what is called a motion for summary judgment. In his ruling, he dismissed the players’ arguments that they were systematically underpaid by U.S. Soccer in comparison with the men’s national team. In fact, Klausner wrote, U.S. Soccer had substantiated its argument that the women’s team had actually earned more “on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis” than the men’s team during the years at issue in the lawsuit….
Klausner’s ruling preserved the players’ claims about unequal treatment in areas like travel, hotel accommodations and team staffing. A trial on those issues is scheduled to begin June 16.
But in dismissing the equal pay argument that had been the heart of the players’ case, Klausner brought to an end — for the moment — a yearslong fight that had pitted the players against their employer, and transformed them from merely the world’s best women’s soccer team into global standard-bearers for pay equity, women’s rights and support for women’s sports.
Upon receiving the decision, the lawyers for the Federation were heard to shout:
Bonus, completely politically incorrect question:
If the women are paid MORE than the men, when do the men sue?
[Featured Image: Megan Rapinoe at NYC Victory Celebration]
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Comments
Feminist chauvinist p… Reproductive rites, superior rights, and now excess pay. Progress. Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic religion/ethics means never technically being a bigot.
Believe all Preying Mantis.
SHE is a Creep of Jeffrey Epstein Level imo.
But, we signed a contract….
/sarcasm/
Megan Rapinoe has been viciously attacking anyone who she disagrees with on any issue ==========- and has attacked the President on many occasions.
And she and her friends were an embarassment when they danced and high-fived each other while trouncing far weaker teams from poorer countries.
So it is a wonderful feeling to know that such wealthy, hateful, bigoted creeps could actually lose under our judicial system.
Winning!
As a woman and a soccer player , I was, and am, embarrassed by these spoiled brats
For the first time I was wishing for a foreign team to beat the USA …and it made me ill
I am tired of gay activist who wear their vagina, or penis, on their sleeves and disrespect our Country, flag, and President
What a raging narcissist, huh?
Well Rapin is the main part of her name. OE!!!!!!!!!!
didn’t they get beat by a high school soccer team
Yeah, but it was a guy’s HS soccer team.
(Didn’t actually reply the first time I hit “submit”.)
On April 7, 2017, the US women’s team lost 5-2 to FC Dallas U-15, in a warm up for a friendly match with Russia.
On May 26, 2016, the Australian national team, the Matildas, lost 7-0 (pronounced “seven – nil”), to a U-15 team of boys, the Newcastle Jets.
The product “women’s soccer” is not the same as “men’s soccer”.
Why should any comparison be made in pay?
God, I hate liberals. Every single one of them.
Liberalism is a divergent ideology, including: generational, factional, sectarian, etc. Classical liberalism isn’t so bad, but it must be tempered by a suitable religious/ethical code. #PrinciplesMatter
OK, to circumvent a debate on semantics, I despise leftists, no matter what they call themselves. Every single one of them.
Several ideas n terms often fly in formation, the point being to confuse, rather than illuminate. Teasing them apart helps, something like using a Nolan or better Pournelli Chart of political preference. Roughly — and “roughly” is the point of conflated ideas — like this:
Liberals — Right thinking folk who want vaguely to make the world a better palce. If you aren’t a self-identified “liberal” you are just wrong. “Deplorable” one might say.
Progressives — Right thinking folk as above, who believe they have the formula, and are a mission to Git Er Done, (by any means necessary.) If you aren’t with the program, it doesn’t matter what the program does to you.
Lefties — The coalition for whom, for all things Something Must Be Done(tm.) Includes above, plus various client n patronage groups who get their various payoffs from “something” — er — being done. Really the practical expression of post-modernist power politics: a coalition of otherwise disjoint interests stable because by being in it everybody gets their cut. See also organized crime.
Statists — The state does All The Things. The bigger, the better in all directions: geography n population, what is its business, means n mechanisms. The bred-in self-organization of ant hills? Yeah, that, except by blueprint (of theirs) until the (state run) eugenics n indoctrination takes over. Statists — the ones running the machinery — always make out: farms aren’t run for the benefit of the sheeple in them.
Fascists — Statists, who believe the all-encompassing state is already here, plus it’s embodiment in a *nation*: a vehicle for a *people*, for whom the *Maximum Leader* speaks n directs, ahead of what the people have realized they want. People who don’t agree aren’t just “us, but wrong”, but “not us”, therefore to be righteously exploited.
and True Believers — People for whom the above provide both excitement and analgesic vs. their own lives: finding themselves both too much burden, and not sufficient reason, they are fodder for any relieving scheme, trading their tarnished n burdensome autonomy for joys they can’t find on their own. The more The Apparatus defines n demands, the more relieved they are of their burden, eventually being individually dead while live, infected agents of The Overlord(s).
And finally, self-avowed Socialists or Communists — people who with an irresistably attractive articulation of the means and end state in hand, create an unbounded rationalization for any of the above: they’re just means, justified on the way to these guys’ utopian end.
All of the above contra Classical Liberals. The Classical Liberal who takes the idea to it’s conclusion ends up quite a moralist, as does a consistent and deep thinking humanist (even the secular ones.)
Unfortunately, it’s not illegal to be an obnoxious shrew, nor should it be. But it is hard not to wish that Ms./Mr./Whatever Rapinoe get her comeuppance at some point.
If only Nelson from the Simpsons was real. You know the kid that points at you and goes, “HA HA!” in a real sarcastic manner.
I’d fly him to Megan Rapinoe city just to meet her.
I hope their idiot attorneys were ALL female…
Either they were leftist harpys, or beta males.
Yeah, but it was a guy’s HS soccer team.
Yes, a good U-16 boys team could beat a World Cup winning womens team.
Male athletes must demonstrate a higher level of athleticism and skill than females.
Find 30 guys willing to identify as women and boom, we’ve got a new women’s team.
I hate to say it because three of my daughters played at a high level, but it’s very true – the men are much faster more athletic than the women players. A high level college men’s team would be able to beat these women.
.
That’s not what this case was about, though. As a marketable product, they just aren’t that big a deal. I took my daughters to see them play the Chinese National Team in a friendly. It was so boring. None of the star players were there. The players were just walking around the field for 90 minutes. They packed the ten or fifteen thousand fans all on one side so that the camera shots would show a packed crowd. We attended Big 10 soccer games back then too, and that was always $5 well spent.
“A high level college men’s team would be able to beat these women.”
The question is: Could these women beat a team of transgendered women?
…high school team…
A good high school team of boys could beat a the Women’s World Cup winners.
Similar story to the HS boys team that beat the US women’s soccer team.
I played collegiate volleyball 1975-1978. ( I was mediocre at best). In 1974, The US women’s VB team played a scrimmage against a men’s team from the north Texas area. There were two rule changes to make the scrimmage competitive.
A) all men had to be less the 5’10” and
B) no men’s hitting in front of the 10foot line.
Test
Rapinoe is simply creepy, stupid, strange…and revels in all of it.
SHE is a Creep of the Jeffrey Epstein Level imo.
Sometimes ya just gotta laugh
Sorry Aggie that was suppose to be an up vote
This has been a claim made by the left for a long time, and yet most studies done recently have found there is no real basis in it, other than in the leftist’s political campaigns.
There was a time when it was likely true, but not completely in the fullest sense. One major factor in “unequal” pay was due to a percentage of women who left the work force for a time to raise families, taking away time on the job, moving to new jobs, which kept salaries a bit lower, or decreased the average pay per year because of years not worked, yet were counted in the dividend factor.
So, this twit seems perfect to team up with Biden as a VP. He is nearly always wrong with his stances too.
Oh it was definitely true at one point and is still true mostly. If not for title nine women’s sports would be held in HS gyms and fields
My daughter was a division 1 Basketball player and the difference in Transportation, food and travel allowances was laughable and this was in 2004
I was about to make a formal complaint when they improved, but hardly equal.
Maybe it was just enough to shut me up , it’s not suppose to be divided by how much you win and if you sustain the crowds but it is,. Women’s sports just don’t make money with few exceptions like UConn, or Tennessee in the past. Funny, people will stand in line to get a ticket for a women’s basketball team in college but not support the “stars” in professional teams./
That makes you think…..
How many millions or billion even will colleges lose this fall because they are shut down and can not play football?
…in the aggregate…..
Why is it not supposed to be that? It seems to me that that’s exactly what it should be, and too often is not. Professional sportspeople are entertainers. That’s what they are. They produce nothing else. So they should be judged like all other entertainers, strictly by how much money they bring in.
Four years of lies will likely trump one day of truth in our society steeped in cosmopolitan pseudoscience.
These soccer twits are total narcissists and ingrates. And, their self-aggrandizing, self-promoting lawsuit stunt is without factual and legal merit.
Leftist traits seem to be lack of clear thinking, logic and not accepting reality.
If you attempt to reason with one, they say you’re “mansplaining”, then, as a Dem/Prog debate tactic roll their eyes, as if the won the day.
If you have any inclination for reading legal documents and understanding what the issues really are in a case and how they get resolved, the entire order is well worth reading. Ultimately, this case is not about whether the players are or are not spoiled brats, but about a poorly thought-out trial strategy, in which a group of individuals mounted a challenge based on selective evidence and emphasis of certain things over other things.
To take a very simple analogy regarding one part of this, suppose two players who are doing roughly similar work make separate agreements with their team. X gets paid 100 per win, and Y gets paid 80 per win. Now, Y claims to have been treated unfairly since Y got 20 less per win. That looks plausible and gets a lot of media publicity, but what hasn’t been mentioned yet is that part of Y’s arrangement was that Y would guaranteed at least 60 per game, win or lose.
To appreciate how nutty it was for the women’s team to have brought this lawsuit and how much of a publicity stunt it appears to have been, one also needs to understand that in a fact-based litigation such as this, it is very hard to achieve the result that the employer achieved, to avoid an actual trial, by demonstrating that the evidence, viewed most favorably to the plaintiff, would not prove the plaintiff’s case. Again, to take an analogy, suppose a plaintiff sued a defendant in a fender-bender, claiming that the defendant had run a stop sign, but the plaintiff was not able to offer any evidence that there was, in fact, a stop sign at the intersection. The judge would, of course, throw the case out, and that is what what happened here.
Tried to watch them once. Boring. Add their conceited attitude.
Bring on the Chiefs!! Mahomes, Kelce, the Sausage. These guys are fun. They are great to watch play, they have great attitudes off the field. They are thankful for their skills and abilities and enjoy their fans. Many players could learn a lot from them.
Sally Jenkins, a sports columnist for WaPo, is nearly unhinged in her column today about the ruling and has some very unkind words about the judge (to summarize: he’s a chauvinist pig and a crappy judge).
There aren’t that many worldwide sports in which the women can draw as many or more fans as the men on a regular basis. Soccer isn’t one of them. Off the top of my head, there’s gymnastics, figure skating, and tennis. I’m sure I’m forgetting one.
The question now is why do they get paid more than the men? Do they bring in more money than the men do? I suppose that’s possible, if interest in men’s soccer is very low, but it doesn’t seem likely.
It turns out that is indeed the case. “The women have produced a very detailed analysis concluding that during the relevant time period (Fiscal Year 2016 to Fiscal Year 2020), the WNT generated a net profit of $10,235,153 while the MNT generated a net loss of -$6,093,897.”
One thing that I’d like to see highlighted is how title IX has created dominance in female sports by American women.
When I was a few years younger, I officiated and coached basketball, softball, baseball, football and hockey. Girls AAU teams are highly competitive and have a higher ratio of athletes that end up receiving a college scholarship offer. These girls feed into USA Soccer, hockey, basketball and softball and they are dominate on the world stage. The funding for such programs trickles down from football and basketball revenue. Rarely are girls leagues ever self sustaining.
I guess my point here is that it would be nice if the young ladies on the USWNT would be a bit more appreciative for the opportunities they’ve been given by the title IX requirements. We’ve created a feeder system for female sports better than any nation in the world and it shows. The young girls who have taken advantage if it have been handsomely rewarded.
If I was the owner I would bench Megan Rapinoe or send her down to the minor league (if there is one). Fine her for any “unsportsmanlike” action until she got her head screwed back on strait. She has disrupted the sport enough and Americans are tired of her.
If there was an actual mens/women’s paygap, then the unemployment rate for women would be close to zero and men’s umemployment rate would be twice the national average in the range of 10-12% – but its not!
Supply and demand curve – very useful concept to learn – yet beyond a progressive’s ability to understand
Follow up.
Just read that Biden has jumped on the soccer women bandwagon telling them to fight the court ruling and bringing the hateful Rapinoe into his campaign.
Sick.