PROVIDENCE — A federal judge on Tuesday approved a settlement between Brown University and student-athletes who had challenged the Ivy League school’s decision to drop several women’s varsity sports.
US District Judge John McConnell Jr. signed off on the agreement, ending more than two decades of legal battles centering on gender discrimination in collegiate athletics.
The settlement, originally announced in September, restores the women’s equestrian and women’s fencing teams to varsity status, and calls for an Aug. 31, 2024, end to a 1998 legal agreement ensuring gender equity in varsity sports at Brown.
That agreement, which came in addition to Title IX requirements, “has been a significant obstacle to the University’s ability to offer women’s and men’s teams the competitive experience athletes deserve and expect,” the school said in a September statement. “Among other things, the 1998 Joint Agreement established unique reporting requirements not faced by any other college or university in the US.”
The settlement stemmed from a legal challenge in June to the school’s decision to reduce its 38 varsity offerings by nine, demoting 11 teams to club status and elevating two — coed and women’s sailing. After public outcry, men’s track, field, and cross country were removed from the list and kept varsity.
Men’s fencing, men’s and women’s golf, women’s skiing, and men’s and women’s squash will still be demoted.
“While we wish we could have convinced Brown to restore all five [women’s] teams, we were able to hammer out an agreement that has restored at least two and will hold the line against any more cuts for the next four years,” said Lynette Labinger, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island.
“These are valuable benefits for our women athletes in the face of a growing national trend to shrink college sports programs across the country,” Labinger added.
The June motion by student-athletes represented by attorneys with the ACLU of Rhode Island, Public Justice, and two private law firms, alleged that the cuts violated the 1998 pact known as the Cohen agreement after the lead plaintiff.
The 1998 agreement had stemmed from a legal challenge to Brown’s decision to cut women’s gymnastics and volleyball in the early 1990s, and mandated the fraction of varsity sports for women at Brown must be within a fixed percentage of the fraction of women in the undergraduate student body.
Public Justice attorney Arthur Bryant called the settlement “a great victory for our clients — the female student-athletes and potential student-athletes at Brown — and everyone committed to advancing gender equity.”