U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Asks Judge To Skip Trial, Give Them The Money

On Thursday, women on the the U.S. women’s national team asked a judge to skip a trail and simply rule in their favor in their $66 million wage discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation, which has countered by asking the judge to dismiss the case.

Yahoo Sports reported, “The USWNT’s lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment, which means the judge would find the players had been discriminated against without the need to go to trial. As part of that, they filed a lengthy analysis determining the women were due up to $67 million in retroactive pay.

U.S. Soccer stated, as NBC News reported:

Women’s national team players are paid differently because they specifically asked for and negotiated a completely different contract than the men’s national team, despite being offered, and rejecting, a similar pay-to-play agreement during the past negotiations. Their preference was a contract that provides significant additional benefits that the men’s national team does not have, including guaranteed annual salaries, medical and dental insurance, paid child-care assistance, paid pregnancy and parental leave, severance benefits, salary continuation during periods of injury, access to a retirement plan, multiple bonuses and more.

Molly Levinson. spokeswoman for the women, countered:

In the most recent CBA negotiation, USSF repeatedly said that equal pay was not an option regardless of pay structure. USSF proposed a “pay to play structure” with less pay across the board. In every instance for a friendly or competitive match, the women players were offered less pay that their male counterparts. This is the very definition of gender discrimination, and of course the players rejected it.

As Matt Walsh wrote in The Daily Wire last July, “… historically U.S. men’s soccer has generated more revenue than U.S. women’s soccer. That gap has closed in recent years, and now the women generate slightly more than the men — though this only takes into account ticket sales, not TV deals and merchandise. But the pay gap in U.S. soccer is not nearly as large as advertised. The highest-paid female soccer players in this country are paid almost the same as the highest-paid male soccer players. The pay gap in U.S. soccer only widens among the lower-tier players.”

Walsh quoted The New York Times:

According to figures provided by U.S. Soccer, since 2008 it has paid 12 players at least $1 million. Six of those players were men, and six were women. And the women hold their own near the top of the pay scale; the best-paid woman made about $1.2 million from 2008 to 2015, while the top man made $1.4 million in the same period. Some women in the top 10 even made more than their male counterparts over those years.

Walsh continued, “The really significant pay gap, and the one that gets most of the press, is in the World Cup payouts. FIFA, the international soccer organization, will give about $400 million to male players in the World Cup, while female players will make around $30 million. When you hear that male players make 10 times what female players make, this is the figure that justifies the claim.”