U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Sets Price for Ending Lawsuit: $67 Million

The kind of multimillion-dollar award sought by the players — a pool of dozens of athletes, including stars like Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd but also players who have made only a handful of appearances for the national team — would be a significant blow to U.S. Soccer’s finances, potentially affecting spending not only the men’s and women’s national teams but also youth development, coaching and referee education and dozens of grass-roots soccer programs.

In their filing, and in publicly placing a dollar amount on a possible award for the first time, the women’s players presented their motion for summary judgment as a simple matter, the “rare case” where they were entitled to prevail because their claims of unequal pay and gender discrimination were laid out explicitly in contracts with the federation.

“There are no genuine issues of fact to prevent the core issues of U.S.S.F.’s liability for wage discrimination from being decided in Plaintiffs’ favor now,” the players’ lead lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler, wrote, citing as support the words of current and former U.S. Soccer officials and even a recent statement from the men’s national team players union.

Saying the federation’s actions were in clear violation of federal law, specifically the Equal Pay Act and Title VII, an expert hired by the players calculated an award of back pay and damages of $66,722,148, “with more to be sought in punitive damages at trial in May.”

The figure was reached, the players’ expert said, by taking the women’s performances, schedules and match results and calculating what they would have earned under the separate compensation schedule in place for the United States men’s national team. Calculations like those, U.S. Soccer has long argued, are inaccurate — and unfair — because they include World Cup bonuses paid by FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, for the far more lucrative men’s World Cup.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/sports/soccer/uswnt-equal-pay-lawsuit.html