In open letter, plaintiffs in landmark sports equity case slam Brown leaders

PROVIDENCE — The original plaintiffs in a Title IX lawsuit against Brown University have penned a scathing open letter directed at the university administration.

Brown University agreed last week to reinstate the varsity women’s fencing and equestrian teams under a proposed settlement with female athletes who challenged the school’s move this spring to cut sports programs.

The settlement was approved Friday by U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr.

The case centered on Brown’s commitments under Cohen v. Brown, a landmark case that is frequently cited as helping to even the playing field nationwide for men’s and women’s college sports.

Brown said the settlement agreement that ended the Cohen case in 1998 had become a “significant obstacle to the university’s ability to offer women’s and men’s teams the competitive experience athletes deserve and expect.” The settlement that McConnell approved Friday puts an August 2024 end date on the Cohen settlement.

In their letter, women who were plaintiffs in the Cohen case expressed their “deep disappointment in what we have discovered: that your commitment to gender equity only goes as far as the letter of the lawsuit.”

The letter is signed by Amy Cohen, Class of 1992; Karen Hurley, Class of 1993; Lisa Kaplowitz, Class of 1995; Darcy Shearer, Class of 1995; and Jennifer Todd, Class of 1995.

The women wrote that they thought Brown had “learned its lesson” in 1998, when it agreed to return two teams to varsity status and add more women’s teams following six years of litigation.

“Sadly, your recent decision to eliminate 11 varsity sports ‘in pursuit of athletic excellence’ demonstrated that our beliefs about the integrity of the institution’s goals were unfounded,” the plaintiffs wrote.

When Brown reinstated men’s track and field and cross-country following strong pushback, the women said the university eliminated twice as many opportunities for women as for men.

“You claim to have taken gender equity, racial diversity and inclusion into consideration in your structural decisions,” the women wrote, “but the ‘pestilential thing’ emails made clear that those were superficial conversations about how to avoid future legal action and bad press, and not based on any true commitment.”

On June 2 of this year, Brown President Christina Paxson wrote in an email: “This might be the perfect moment to petition the court to get us out of this agreement, which would let us restore men’s track, field and [cross country] and still remain in compliance with Title IX.”

A week later, in an email exchange with Paxson, Chancellor Samuel Mencoff wrote, “Could we channel all this emotion away from anger at Brown to anger at the court and kill this pestilential thing?”

In last week’s settlement, Brown agreed to restore two of the five eliminated women’s teams, varsity equestrian and fencing, in exchange for a dissolution of the original consent decree in Cohen v. Brown.

The Journal has reached out to Brown for comment.

Last week Brown praised the recent settlement, saying it will permit the school to strengthen its sports competitiveness and improve recruiting and budgeting.

The Cohen plaintiffs, in their letter, urged Brown to create an advisory board of male and female athletes and alumni to share in the decision-making about sports, install a “trusted leader” to oversee these efforts and develop a clear plan toward gender equity.