The U.S. women’s national soccer team has settled its lawsuit with the U.S. Soccer Federation.
The team’s governing body is expected to pay out $22 million to the team’s players as a result of the gender discrimination suit. Those funds will be distributed by the players and approved by the District Court. The USSF will also put an additional $2 million into an account to be used by the players in their post-career work and charitable endeavors in women’s and girl’s soccer, which each player can apply for up to $50,000.
That $24 million total will be accessible once the women’s national team agrees upon a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with the USSF. The $22 million is about one-third of what the team had sought in damages, per the Associated Press.
“We can’t go back and undo the injustices that we’ve faced,” USWNT leader Megan Rapinoe said on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday morning after the team and USSF released a joint statement on the settlement. “The only justice coming out of this is that we know that something like this is never going to happen again and we can move forward in making soccer the best sport that we possibly can in this country and setting up the next generation so much better than we ever had it.
“This is a huge win for all women. I think we’re going to see that in the coming days and hopefully this will be a day we look back on in a number of years when we’re a little bit older and say that’s the moment that everything changed.”
In the agreement, the USSF also committed to providing an equal rate of pay for both the women’s and men’s national teams. The pay rate, also subject to a new CBA, would include equal World Cup bonuses.
Rapinoe, fellow lawsuit leader Alex Morgan and the women’s national team have championed their latest fight for equal pay and treatment in women’s sports for more than five years despite the lawsuit being just three years old — the players, along with former goalie Hope Solo, first filed a federal discrimination complaint in 2016 calling for an investigation into unequal pay between the USWNT and their male counterparts, despite often having higher ratings and viewership. The players filed their gender discrimination lawsuit against the USSF on March 8, 2019 (International Women’s Day) citing “institutionalized gender discrimination” affected women’s national team player’s paychecks, training, travel, coaching, playing and medical treatment.
“It’s a historic day for us!” Morgan tweeted. It’s been years and years of fighting for equality within our sport. Today we accomplished that with US Soccer.”
Over those three years, the USSF headed by then-president Carlos Cordeiro, used its resources to disprove the players’ claims — even after the Americans captured another World Cup victory in the summer of 2019, their fourth World Cup title, while the men’s team failed to qualify for their 2018 World Cup. Cordeiro’s team tried to claim that the women generated less revenue and that they earned more money than the men’s team, both points which were disproved after various media outlets got hold of the USSF’s audited financial reports.
Packed stadiums of fans chanting “Equal Pay!” after the women won that fourth title in France combined with the posters waved at their championship parades that read “Equal Pay for Superior Play” weren’t enough to show the team’s popularity and marketability to their own federation. And even when the men’s team publicly threw their support for the USWNT’s fight for equal pay it still wasn’t enough to convince the USSF to stop its backwards thinking.
The players’ fight took a crushing blow on May 1, 2020, when a federal judge ruled in favor of the USSF and dismissed the team’s equal pay claims. Then in April of 2021, the players and the USSF, headed by new boss Cindy Parlow Cone — a former national team player elected the federation’s new VP in 2020, then assumed the role of president in March that year after Cordeiro resigned — settled on the unequal working conditions aspect of their lawsuit, which paved the way for the team to appeal their equal pay claims.
“Being in a contentious litigation with our players is not good for our sport,” Parlow Cone said on the “Today” show Tuesday. “I think this is a momentous occasion. This is a huge win for soccer, this is a huge win for U.S. Soccer, the players, of women’s sport, and I’m just so excited to move forward together and actually start working with the women’s team to grow the game both here at home and abroad.”
