Judge sides with U.S. Soccer in equal pay lawsuit

[alp227]

Source: ESPN

A federal judge in California ruled in favor of the United States Soccer Federation on most of the key points in the ongoing wage discrimination lawsuit brought by members of the U.S. women's national team player pool, dealing a substantial setback to the players in the high-profile case.

Players based the lawsuit filed last year on two grounds. First, that U.S. Soccer violated the Equal Pay Act by paying them less than members of the men's national team; and second, that the federation discriminated against them under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically with regard to workplace conditions.

Judge R. Gary Klausner on Friday ruled for U.S. Soccer's motion for summary judgment with regard to the Equal Pay Act, stating in his decision that the players "have not demonstrated a triable issue that WNT players are paid less than MNT players."

Klausner ruled in favor of the federation's contention that women's players were paid more in total and on a per-game basis during the period in question.

Read more: https://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/story/_/id/29125363/judge-sides-us-soccer-equal-pay-lawsuit

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Klausner is a GW Bush nominee to the court: https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/klausner-robert-gary

[iluvtennis]

1. Megan Rapinoe: We will never stop fighting for EQUALITY.

Megan Rapinoe@mPinoe·57m

We will never stop fighting for EQUALITY.

Link to tweet

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I stand with the US women's soccer team - they deserve equal pay.

[OneCrazyDiamond]

2. That makes no sense.

If the woman made more, and the men had more revenue, the men would have a case. Can they appeal a dismissal?

[MichMan]

3. The men weren't the ones filing the lawsuit

[OneCrazyDiamond]

6. And their not filing a case.

This tells me the men made more money.

We really need a way to retire Republican judges.

[MichMan]

8. The women and men had previously agreed to different contract terms

Last edited Sat May 2, 2020, 10:49 AM - Edit history (2)

That was the basis for the ruling.

The women's contract had a base salary with a smaller per game bonus, while the men's team pay was based on no base salary, but a much higher per game pay and bonus. The judge ruled that was their choice when they negotiated the contract terms. The judge determined that he wasn't going to renegotiate the terms of the contract, that both sides had agreed upon, after the fact.

The men are not suing because they were paid under the contract terms they themselves had negotiated.

Is it your opinion that collective bargaining agreements should be renegotiable if either party later decides the terms weren't favorable to them?


See Post #7 below

[MichMan]

4. Look at pro basketball for real salary disparities

Stephen Curry makes $40 million per season while the highest paid WNBA player DeWanna Bonner only gets $128,000.

[Jose Garcia]

5. Do the NBA and the WNBA bring in the same amount of revenue?

[MichMan]

9. They are perfoming the same job duties for the same employer, are they not?

Would it be acceptable if a corporation has two divisions, one very profitable with male employees, and the other not profitable, with female employees, and they paid the men substantially more than the women because they worked for the profitable division ?

The NBA owns and operates both leagues

[killaphill]

10. I agree

The NBA owns both leagues. Therefore, revenue should be shared equally amongst those leagues, which would include salaries.

[Dr. Strange]

11. They're not even remotely performing the same job duties.

If DeWanna Bonner was actually able to perform the same job as Steph Curry, she could literally go into the NBA and make the same amount. There is NOTHING in the rules or structure of the NBA that would prevent her from making the same money for the same performance.

[MichMan]

12. Since women athletes do not perform at a comparable level to men in any sport

Your opinion is that they all deserve to be paid less across the board ?

At least in the soccer case, the judge ruled that it was a result of the way the contracts for each were structured from collective bargaining. That is a lot different than saying male athletes deserve to be paid more than female athletes because they perform the skills better.

[Dr. Strange]

13. In any entertainment industry...

pay will be based in part on audience interest.

The NBA is the most competitive basketball league in the world. And it generates a lot of revenue. As such, anyone who is able to perform the job duties needed to compete on the court should be paid handsomely. The WNBA is a more restricted league. It is closed off to talented people like Steph Curry. This limitation could result in less revenue. (In the case of the WNBA, it clearly does.) As such, I wouldn't expect the players to get paid as much. (Although, as it turns out, WNBA players make a larger percentage of their league's revenue than NBA players.)

The soccer decision was definitely a different matter. But I'm not arguing that male athletes should be paid better for being male athletes. That shouldn't be an issue in any pay discussion. I'm arguing that it's difficult to argue against anyone who performs a job better (or in some cases, extremely better) being paid better.

[MichMan]

7. Judge ruled that the women and men had originally agreed to different contract terms

"While the women certainly would have made more money under the men’s bonus structure — the U.S. men would have made more than $1.1 million for winning the 2018 World Cup, according to The Guardian’s Caitlin Murray, while the women made less than $300,000 — Klausner ruled that was the players' choice.

Unlike the U.S. men, who are only paid for games they play, the women get a base salary.
“Plaintiffs cannot now retroactively deem their CBA worse than the MNT CBA by reference to what they would have made had they been paid under the MNT’s pay-to-play structure when they themselves rejected such a structure,” Klausner wrote. “This method of comparison not only fails to account for the choices made during collective bargaining, it also ignores the economic value of the `insurance’ the WNT players receive under their CBA."

“Merely comparing what WNT players received under their own CBA with what they would have received under the MNT CBA discounts the value that the team placed on the guaranteed benefits they receive under their agreement,” Klausner added, “which they opted for at the expense of higher performance-based bonuses.”

Klausner also rejected a claim that the women had been discriminated against because they were forced to play on artificial turf more often than the men. "


[link:https://www.freep.com/story/sports/soccer/2020/05/01/uswnt-claim-equal-pay-thrown-out-federal-judge/3070852001/|