Nathan News

EWA BEACH, Hawaii – It was tough enough when Ashley Badis and her daughters’ water polo teammates had to practice in the ocean, battling fickle winds and choppy waves because their high school didn’t have them. pool provided.

But it was humiliating, Badis said, when she learned that female athletes from other teams were lugging their gear to school all day, running to a nearby Burger King to use the bathroom or changing clothes. clothes under the bleachers or on the bus. The boys had no such worries as they had their own dressing room and facilities.

“Hearing the number of concerns and complaints they had – it made me feel like I wasn’t alone in this, but it’s so wrong that we’re all being treated like this,” said Badis, now 21, in an interview with her. family home in this suburb of Honolulu.

Badis is among the plaintiffs in a potentially landmark Title IX case that alleges widespread and systemic gender discrimination against female athletes at James Campbell High School, Hawaii’s largest public high school.

The Hawaii case, however, moves forward and goes beyond issues of systemic problems with participation and unequal treatment: it also accuses Campbell officials of retaliating against the girls for raising concerns by identifying the plaintiffs, who had only used their initials in the lawsuit, and warning faculty members to speak with caution around them.

It was also unnerving, Badis said, when school officials repeatedly threatened to cancel the girls’ water polo season, then claimed that half of the program documents, like medical forms and of consent, were lacking even if they had been submitted.

And now, following a federal judge’s ruling in July that the case can proceed as a class action, the outcome of the lawsuit could affect generations of girls in Hawaii and act as a stress test. wider for Title IX promises and responsibilities. .

Several plaintiffs and their families are speaking out publicly for the first time, in interviews with The New York Times. What makes the case particularly poignant is the timing of the class certification – the 50th anniversary of the enactment of Title IX – and the location of the dispute – the home of former U.S. Representative Patsy T. Mink, l one of the architects of measurement. and a revered political figure in Hawaii. Mink died in 2002.

“What strikes me in this 50th anniversary year is how little we know about what’s going on in the high school space,” said Ellen J. Staurowsky, professor of sports media at the Ithaca College and Principal Investigator of a recent title. Report IX published by the Women’s Sports Foundation. “I think this case is important, fundamentally. It has the potential to be a real wake-up call for schools that continue to ignore the law and don’t take it seriously.

Referring to Mink, Staurowsky added, “If we can’t get it right in a state that she represented, then we have some very serious thinking to do.”

The defendants include the Hawaii Department of Education and the Oahu Interscholastic Association, which oversees high school sports. The athletic association’s inclusion in the lawsuit is notable because groups that do not directly receive federal funding have often not been required to comply with Title IX. But Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi of the Federal District Court of Hawaii ruled that the plaintiffs had “provided sufficient factual evidence to plausibly allege” that the association “may be subject to the anti-discrimination provisions of the title. IX”.

Spokespersons for the education department and the sports association said they would not comment on the ongoing litigation. Gary H. Yamashiroya, a special assistant to the state’s attorney general, who represents the defendants, wrote in an email: “Hawaii has strict legal ethics rules regarding open trials, so we are unfortunately not unable to comment on this matter. ”

In court papers, the defendants argued that school officials did their best and that the girls who sued are not entitled to retroactive remedies: “The Department of Education has done and continues to make reasonable efforts required to accommodate complainants.”

Sports are of outsized importance at Ewa Beach. Among his hometown heroes are Tua Tagovailoa, quarterback for the Miami Dolphins and the Little League World Series team that won in 2005 – the first of Hawaii’s four championships.

Campbell, whose teams are called the Sabers, has more than 3,000 students, more than three-quarters of whom are Asian, Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or Hispanic. But in February 2018, the Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit newsroom, detailed gender disparities at Campbell, among other schools, reporting that female athletes had not had locker rooms since the building was built. school in 1962.

With access to only a handful of dilapidated portable toilets (which were sometimes locked due to vandalism) at playgrounds, some girls drank less water – despite Ewa Beach’s hot and dry climate – to avoid running to the nearest available bathroom in a fast-food restaurant or gas station, 800 meters away.

Some girls would “squat in the bushes” to relieve themselves, according to the lawsuit.

Speaking via videoconference recently, former football and water polo player Abby Pothier described the daily indignities of being a Campbell Saber woman.

All day, she carried around a sports bag containing soccer balls, cleats, shin guards and more. It was separate from his backpack and lunch box.

Sometimes women’s soccer players could not practice until the men’s soccer and soccer teams had completed their practices on the same field.

“It would be 9:30 a.m. already,” said Pothier, now a sophomore at the University of California, Irvine. “The lights would go out or the sprinklers would come on – maybe both.”

While the football team played in places like Phoenix and Las Vegas, the girls rarely left Oahu, according to the lawsuit.

Yet when the women’s soccer team qualified for state tournament games on Maui, the team was not allowed to stay overnight. So they had a narrow window to fly there, play and come back, often without showering.

“We were rushing after games, taking everyone in vans back to the airport, and we didn’t have time to eat,” Pothier said. “It was like, ‘Sorry, you have to go to your door. You can eat when you get home.

Ashley Badis’ family was also steeped in Campbell’s athleticism. But not by choice.

When Badis signed up for water polo in the spring of her freshman year after competing on the winter swim team, she learned that the school had not hired a coach, despite repeated requests from female students.

Ashley’s father stepped in, Dominic Badis Jr., a firefighter, even though he knew nothing about the sport. It wasn’t until he asked for help on Facebook that he recruited another coach: a firefighter friend who had played in high school.

The school did not ask for papers or do background checks.

“Scary,” said Caron Badis, Ashley’s mother.

After Civil Beat published its article on gender disparities, the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii demanded that the Department of Education develop a plan to address the inequalities, saying that 14 schools in the state with lockers for male athletes did not have lockers for women, said Wookie Kim, the group’s chief legal officer.

But frustrated with the lack of progress, the ACLU of Hawaii — in conjunction with Legal Aid at Work, a nonprofit in San Francisco and a pro bono team from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP — filed a lawsuit in justice in December 2018 on behalf of the plaintiffs.

“The irony is that the month we were there to file in 2018, the State of Hawaii was dedicating a statue to Patsy Mink,” said Elizabeth Kristen, senior attorney at Legal Aid at Work and director of its Fair Play for Girls in Sports Project.

After a lengthy legal battle over whether the case could proceed as a class action, Judge Kobayashi set a trial date for October 2023.

The plaintiffs — Ashley Badis and her sister Alexis; Abby Pothier; and another former student — do not seek compensation. Instead, they push for change and accountability.

“I wanted to make sure things were better for future generations,” said Ashley Badis, now a senior at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “I didn’t want them to go through what I had to do.”

During a tour of Campbell’s perimeter, state Rep. Matthew S. LoPresti, a Democrat who represents Ewa Beach, pointed to improvements, like a new baseball and softball field with artificial turf next to it. a small building with lockers for softball players (there is a separate locker room for baseball). And while far from ideal, female athletes were also allowed to use a boys’ locker room.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers have allocated an additional $6 million this year to the Department of Education for Campbell’s athletic facilities, including a girls’ locker room, as part of a broader 60-year effort. million dollars in Title IX statewide.

“My job is to catch up,” LoPresti said.

But he also supported the litigation.

“I support anyone who fights for justice,” he said. “At the end of the day, we’re still fighting a patriarchal system that favors boys over girls.”

One person following the case from afar is Gwendolyn Mink, daughter of Patsy T. Mink.

An academic with a background in politics and women’s studies, Gwendolyn Mink praised the Campbell plaintiffs, saying high school students often face extraordinary pressure from their peers and communities. And although the Athletics Equity Disclosure Act, passed in 1994, requires colleges to publish gender equity data in their athletic programs, there is no federal law comparable to the K-12 level.

“We’ve made huge strides in opening the door, letting women in and redistributing the gender balance as well,” Mink said. “But in terms of institutions that take it upon themselves to create a level playing field to nurture your aspirations, that’s where I think we’ve really fallen off.”