 "Photo: Photo courtesy of quinnipiacbobcats.com")
In 2009 five members of the Quinnipiac University women’s volleyball team and their coach sued the school after the sport was cut due to budget cuts. Women’s volleyball was replaced with a competitive cheer squad in order to comply with Title IX, the 1972 federal law that mandates equal opportunities for men and women in athletics.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Stefan R. Underhill ruled that Quinnipiac violated Title IX, because competitive cheer is not an official sport.
The lawsuit was given class action status so that it applies to all current and future female athletes at Quinnipiac, and Underhill ordered the university continue its volleyball program for the 2010-11 season.
“[Competitive cheer] is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students,” Judge Underhill said in his decision.
He also concluded that Quinnipiac could no longer count athletes that participated in cross-country and both indoor and outdoor track three times for purposes of Title IX requirements.
“The University was close to achieving that degree of proportionality,” Underhill said in his decision. “Its decision to gamble on its competitive cheer team being found to be a Title IX sport, and on all of its indoor and outdoor track runners countable under Title IX, however, deprived Quinnipiac of just enough female athletes to meet OCR’s first prong for Title IX compliance.”
The University has 60 days to submit a compliance plan to the court on how it will comply with Title IX, and have not yet stated its plans for the 2010-11 season.
“The University naturally is disappointed that the court has disallowed competitive cheer as a varsity sport,” Lynn Bushnell, vice president for public affairs, said in a statement. “We will continue to press for competitive cheer to become an officially recognized varsity sport in the future. Consistent with our long-standing plans to expand opportunities in women’s athletics, the University intends to add women’s rugby as a varsity sport beginning in the 2011-2012 academic year.”
Quinnipiac may drop the women’s volleyball team after the upcoming season, but would have to find some other way to remain Title IX compliant.
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