Brown University Settles Long Battle Over Women in Sports
Brown University Settles Lawsuit Over Women’s Varsity Sports
(Bloomberg) -- Brown University ended a legal battle over women in sports that started more than two decades ago with a landmark agreement on gender parity and then burst back on the scene this spring.
The university announced on Thursday that it would restore to varsity status two women’s teams it had downgraded and that the pact that has governed the composition of its teams for 22 years would end in August 2024.
Under the agreement that arose from the deal, if the Providence, Rhode Island, university cuts any intercollegiate women’s teams, each gender’s representation in the athletic program must be within 2.25% of its share of the undergraduate student body for the year.
Brown’s president, Christina Paxson, said she was “very pleased” with the settlement.
“The Cohen agreement served an important purpose when it was signed 22 years ago, but Brown’s commitment to women athletes transcends the agreement,” Paxson said in a statement. “We can provide excellent athletics opportunities for women and men, be a leader in upholding Title IX and have a competitive varsity program. And we will.”
Last fall, 841 women and 821 men enrolled in Brown as first-year undergraduate students, according to public data. Female applicants outnumbered male applicants by 22,882 to 15,792.
This spring, Brown demoted five varsity women’s teams to club status, along with six men’s teams, to spend more money on other sports. After a backlash, it reinstated three of the men’s teams. That threw it out of compliance with the gender standard in the 1998 agreement, according to Public Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, which in June asked a federal court in Providence to enforce the pact.
Under the proposed settlement announced Thursday, which must be approved by a judge, Brown will restore the women’s equestrian and fencing teams to varsity status, though the golf, skiing and squash teams remain downgraded.
Lynette Labinger, a Rhode Island attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the case, said the goal was to restore all five teams to varsity status, but “the math didn’t work.” Varsity athletes at colleges get access to coaches, trainers and facilities that others don’t, she said, adding that she would have liked to bring the men’s teams back as well.
“If you are aspiring to be, or are, a varsity athlete, and that’s the experience you come to Brown for, it’s a total disappointment” to find yourself on a club team, Labinger said. “The higher level of competition is always going to help you fine-tune and improve your craft.”
Anna Susini, a junior at Brown and the captain of the women’s fencing team, called it “a bittersweet victory.”
“I’m hoping this is not an end and it opens the door a little bit for them to see how the teams they cut are really valuable,” said Susini, 20. She said she and about 100 other students, their parents and alumni of the team fought through the summer to bring them all back.
Come 2024, Brown will still have to do the math. Even after the Cohen agreement is no longer in force, Labinger said, Title IX will require that the number of women athletes be “substantially proportionate” to their numbers in the school’s general student body.
Brown’s legal skirmish this summer was no doubt closely watched by other colleges wrestling with budgets and varsity configurations.
“If it counsels any other school,” Labinger said, “it should counsel them to take care of their women as well as their men.”
The case is Cohen v. Brown University, 92-cv-00197, U.S. District Court, District of Rhode Island.
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