A U.S. District Court judge denied a request for a temporary restraining order just one day after Iowa swimmers asked the court to stop the school from moving forward with its cut of the women’s swimming & diving program.
The request was part of a Title IX lawsuit brought by four University of Iowa swimmers. In August, Iowa announced it would be eliminating four sports programs, including both men’s and women’s swimming & diving, at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. The following month, four swimmers sued the school, arguing that cutting the women’s swimming & diving program would violate federal laws requiring gender equality in education.
The four swimmers (and two other Iowa students filing the suit) asked the court for a temporary restraining order and injunction, preventing the school from moving forward with any plans to cut the women’s swimming & diving program.
But on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Rose denied that request, saying the athletes hadn’t sufficiently proven that moving forward with the cuts would do irreparable harm to the athletes. Their motion had argued that even if the program was spared from elimination, the school’s current course would cause athletes to transfer away and effectively halt the team’s recruiting activities this year.
The suit says that 15 of the 35 members of the Iowa swimming & diving team have entered the NCAA transfer portal after Iowa announced the program cuts.
Rose did agree that the swimmers’ suit is time-sensitive, and set a hearing for December 18.
Screw the boys anyway tho right?
Right
You don’t understand the Title IX suit. There are already an overwhelming and well funded men’s athletics programs on campus. The school is required to offer an equal number of women programs. Here is a thought, force the mem’s football and basketball programs to support themselves. Considering each football coach received roughly a $90,000 pay increase this year and did not take in enough revenue to cover their raises and total salary commitments last year, maybe football coaching has become cost prohibitive at Iowa.
great – chewing up more $$ in legal and adminstrative fees…..
Hopeful that eventually a TRO is issued, so that the student-athletes and other interested parties are given at least a reasonable chance to self-fund/endow the program. A year maybe?
But even more hopeful that the recent “60 Minutes” special segment on college sports and in particular, the lack of funding by big universities (Power 5 athletic departments typically receive zero funds from the school’s general operating budget) inspires some nationwide discussion about the health of the college experience generally. For decades now, big-time college sports have been all about money, and the non-revenue sports slowly fade away. Are boards of regents doing their jobs to ensure a wide range of learning? Yes, student-athletes learn A LOT from their experiences on… Read more »
Keep fighting!
It’s an extremely difficult legal burden to win a TRO, so this is not terribly surprising. The good news is that the Court recognized this is time-sensitive and set a hearing for just 9 days from now.