NEW YORK (Reuters) – Players from the U.S. women’s national soccer team filed a final brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday in their bid to revive their equal pay case in opposition to U.S. Soccer.
Judge R. Gary Klausner of the United States District Court for the Central District of California in 2020 threw out the gamers’ claims that they have been underpaid in comparability with the lads’s national team.
The team filed their opening brief in the appeal 5 months in the past, saying the choice to dismiss the case was based mostly on flawed authorized reasoning.
“The district court docket held that the ladies haven’t any declare as a result of they acquired extra whole compensation than the lads. That is flatly fallacious,” the plaintiffs mentioned in Monday’s closing brief.
“Total compensation just isn’t the usual beneath the Equal Pay Act or Title VII. The Equal Pay Act says to match charges of pay, not whole compensation.”
Asked to remark, U.S. Soccer referred Reuters to earlier statements and famous it provided equivalent contract proposals to the lads’s and women’s gamers associations, a transfer the United States Women’s National Team Players Association (USWNT) mentioned in September amounted to little greater than a publicity stunt.
U.S. Soccer and the women’s team reached a deal on Monday to increase a no-strike/no-lockout settlement to March 31, 2022, whereas persevering with collective bargaining settlement (CBA) negotiations.
Under the settlement, U.S. Soccer mentioned it will now not pay salaries of national team members to play in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).
“We’re scheduled to satisfy with the USWNT in the present day to proceed financial discussions across the equivalent gives that we offered to each the USWNT and USMNT (U.S. Men’s National Team Players Assocation) on September 14,” U.S. Soccer mentioned.
“We proceed to attend on the USMNT Players Association to do the identical and hope to quickly work immediately with USMNT gamers to get a deal carried out.”
Monday’s submitting by the four-time World-Cup profitable U.S. women’s team marks the newest chapter in a long-running and acrimonious authorized saga for the reason that gamers sued in 2019, claiming $66 million in damages beneath the Equal Pay Act.
The two sides reached a settlement over working situations a yr in the past.
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Ken Ferris)
