The State of Hawaii has settled a 2018 lawsuit filed by female athletes at James Campbell High School in Ewa Beach who claimed the school only gave male athletes locker rooms, leaving girls to change in the bleachers or at a nearby Burger King before and after their games.
As reported by the The Washington Post, Campbell’s locker room was reserved exclusively for male athletes, forcing girls to change in teacher’s closets, on buses and in the bathroom of the Burger King, which was closer to the fields than the nearest school restroom, the lawsuit stated.
Girls’ teams also received fewer travel opportunities, worse equipment and inferior practice facilities than boys’ teams, according to the lawsuit. During the 2017-18 school year, Campbell’s girls’ water polo team was allegedly not given a pool to practice in at the start of the season. Instead, they practiced at a nearby beach, buffeted by ocean currents.
Ashley Badis and Tatiana Troup, then seniors on the varsity water polo and swimming teams, sued Hawaii’s Department of Education and the Oahu Interscholastic Association, alleging that their experiences reflected a broad pattern of inequity for female athletes in the state’s public schools in violation of Title IX.
"Last week, the former Campbell athletes secured a settlement that will ensure girls at the school receive equal athletic benefits as their male peers, attorneys for Badis and Troup announced Friday," Danel Wu of the Post reported. "The settlement is not monetary but will require the state department of education to hire an independent evaluator to address inequities and evaluate the school’s compliance for the next seven years."
“I’m happy that future students won’t have to go through what my teammates and I did,” Badis said in a statement, as reported by Wu. “We just wanted girls to have the same opportunities to play that boys had, and it’s great to see Campbell moving in the right direction with this settlement.”
In a court filing, the Hawaii Department of Education and Oahu Interscholastic Association denied liability for the allegations but deemed the settlement “fair and reasonable.” Attorneys for the education department and Oahu group did not immediately respond to Post requests for comment.
Badis and Troup’s lawsuit accused the state education department of overseeing a widespread failure to ensure gender equity in school athletics, according to Wu.
"The lawsuit alleged that a 2016 department report found several high schools, including Campbell, did not provide girls with stand-alone locker rooms," Wu reported. "At Campbell, girls’ teams suffered various inconveniences as a result. Girls in Campbell’s softball and track-and-field programs allegedly changed in the bleachers by a practice field in open view, holding up jackets to cover each other."
Campbell, the largest public high school in Hawaii, with an enrollment of about 3,000 students, discriminated against female athletes in game scheduling, travel opportunities, publicity, and access to facilities and coaches, according to the lawsuit.
Besides the lack of a locker room, girls’ teams had games regularly scheduled on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while three-quarters of Friday night slots were reserved for boys’ sports, according to the lawsuit, which also alleged that boys’ basketball and football teams could hold additional practices at will that displaced the girls’ volleyball and track-and-field teams.
Campbell also allegedly failed to fill coaching positions for girls’ sports. When Badis and Troup filed their lawsuit, the school had no varsity girls’ softball or soccer coaches and did not pay its assistant coaches for the girls’ water polo team, according to the lawsuit.
"When athletes on the girls’ water polo team raised concerns about their program, the state education department and Campbell administrators allegedly retaliated by withholding funding from the team and forcing them to resubmit paperwork," Wu wrote. "The team’s unusual practices were memorialized in a school yearbook page, where players complained that the conditions in the ocean were not properly preparing them for a season of competition in regulation pools, according to the lawsuit. The team, which included players vying for college scholarships, ultimately had their coach pay out of his own pocket to access a pool for training, the lawsuit alleged."
Badis, who is now studying biology at the University of Hawaii, received national recognition for her role in the lawsuit in July when ESPN awarded her the Billie Jean King Youth Leadership Award.
Part of the settlement announced Friday will require Campbell staff to undergo training on gender equity requirements set out by Title IX and the creation of a hotline and online complaint process to report violations.
