U.S. Women's National Soccer team loses most of its equal pay lawsuit

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California recently dismissed most of the U.S. Women's National Team's (WNT) equal pay claims. The decision in Morgan, et al. v. U.S. Soccer Federation, Inc. relied heavily on the history of the parties' collective bargaining negotiations, zeroing in on the fact that the WNT rejected an offer to be paid under the same pay structure as the Men's National Team (MNT). The WNT specifically rejected higher base pay and bonuses, among other terms, for a pay plan that included a guarantee the women would be compensated regardless of whether they played. The MNT's collective bargaining agreement (CBA) required that the players be paid only for the games in which they played.

The court held the WNT "cannot now retroactively deem their CBA worse than the MNT CBA by reference to what they would have made had they been paid under the MNT's pay-to-play structure when they themselves rejected such a structure." Further, when comparing each party's total compensation, rather than individual elements of pay, it became clear the WNT was paid more than the MNT. Specifically, the WNT played 111 games and made $24.5 million, averaging $220,747 per game. By contrast, the MNT played 87 games and made $18.5 million, averaging $212,639 per game. The court did preserve the WNT's claims related to discriminatory working conditions with respect to (1) field surfaces, (2) travel conditions (specifically, charter flights and hotels), and (3) support services.