US Women's Soccer Equal Pay "Appeal" | Lawyers Explain with @UncivilLaw

so the women of the u.s national team are appealing a federal judge's dismissal of their gender discrimination claims and here's why [Music] hey my name is nathan lawyer welcome to my youtube channel if it's your first time here don't forget to like this video share this video and subscribe to the channel if you like what you hear let's get into it so today we're going to look at the us women's national team's appeal from a federal court's dismissal of their equal pay claims now if you want to know why the women's national team lawsuit was dismissed click on this link this will give you all the details that you need to know also i suggest you watch that video before watching this video so you can have a full understanding on why the judge threw out and i mean throughout their gender discrimination lawsuit but here is the quick and dirty so you don't have to watch that whole video before watching this one so what happened at the lower court well the judge made a couple of factual findings that you need to understand before we even go into the appeal well the first thing that court found was that the women's team got paid more than a men both on a per game basis their rate of pay happened to be higher and overall they got more money overall than men so if you're claiming discrimination the court was like well hold on how can they be discriminated against you guys if they're paying you more on a per game basis and overall number two the court found that u.s soccer offered the women the men's deal and the woman rejected it why did the woman reject it well the court found that the women rejected it for guaranteed money they wanted money that was guaranteed see the men play on a pay-to-play schedule so if there's no games they don't get paid with the women are salaried employees that means they get paid no matter what so for instance remember last year when we had the global pandemic where there was no soccer games well no men from the men's national team got paid because they only get paid if they play in a game but the women's national team those 20 women who got the 100 000 salary as they negotiated they still got paid they got paid their 100 000 salary and full benefits during the pandemic when the men got nothing from u.s soccer but don't take my word for it let's actually read what the judge wrote in his opinion this approach merely comparing what each team would have made under the other team's cba is untenable in this case because it ignores the reality that the men's national team and women's national team bargain for different agreements which reflect different preferences and that the women's national team explicitly rejected the terms they now seek to retroactively impose on themselves the first time the women's national team requested bonuses equivalent to those received by the men's national team was in january 2016. the united states soccer federation rejected that proposal however because the women's national team was not asking for a pay-to-play arrangement similar to the men's national team cba instead it was asking for all the upsides of the men's national team cba namely higher bonuses without any of the drawbacks no base salary in may 2016 the united states soccer federation offered the women's national team a pay-to-play proposal similar to the men's national team cba but the women's national team rejected it preferring an arrangement that involves some elements of guaranteed compensation so essentially the women took guaranteed salary over the risk of a play-to-play schedule and when they found out that they could make more on the player play schedule they said discrimination even though we signed the agreement so now that you know the facts let's talk about the appeal now in my last video about this topic i bought employment lawyer legal bites to help me explain the structure of the agreements but this time we're on appeal so who better to bring in than an attorney who goes over appellate cases here on youtube his amazon civil law check it out hi everyone my name is kurt and i run the channel on civil law nate asked me to participate in this discussion because this is on appeal and on my channel i mainly cover appellate law cases appellate law is the best you don't have to worry about what the facts are the trial court already took care of all that instead you can laser focus on the law and see what the correct legal result should be all right so what's happening on appeal well first the issue here is did the lower court or district court make a mistake in granting summary judgment for the united states soccer federation the representatives of the women's national team have made two arguments on why the lower court ruling should be reversed first they say the district court used the wrong legal standards in assessing the women's national team players claims of an equal pay and their second argument is that the district court disregarded all of their evidence that they were paid unequally and by disregarding that evidence the court made an error in dismissing their case so let's look at their first argument here's a civil law the first legal argument has three major components the first component the women argue because the men can win up to nine million dollars in bonuses because their rate of pay is higher the law demands that their rate of pay also be equal and that the lower court found that the women's bargain for a guaranteed salary and benefits instead of taking the risk of losing second the women argue that the law demands an employer must pay a woman the same amount it pays a man for an equal measure of work the lower court found the women got paid more both cumulatively and on a per game basis the women actually were better off than the men third they argue that the work in this situation should be measured both by the number of games that were played and the results that are achieved the federation after all they argue pays players not just merely to play but to win and therefore winning should mean more money the district court found that they did in fact make more money per game and overall and they had rejected the deal that would have paid them more for winning they wanted guaranteed money in legal briefings submitted to the ninth circuit the women argued that the trial court's main error was in failing to take the success of the women's team into account but how about actual evidence of discrimination well to discuss that here's nate so coach broken down the first argument for the women's national team but now let's look at the second argument on appeal the women's national team claims that the district court aired in dismissing the women's national team's players evidence of paid discrimination well first they point to statements by federation officials acknowledging that the women's national team and the men's national team were not paid equally and specifically that this differential treatment was because of sex former federation president sunil galati confirmed that he quote would never have authorized paying the women and men the same bonuses they also point to statements made by former federation president carlos cardero which he acknowledged that female players had not been treated equally and the federation clearly needed to work toward equal pay for the national teams last they point to the federation's council who stated during the collective bargaining agreement that the market realities are that the women do not deserve equal pay now the women believe that these statements were essentially ignored by the court the second piece of direct evidence that women believe that the court ignored was obvious disparities in the terms of the women and men's collective bargaining agreements specifically that if the women would have been paid under the men's deal they would have collectively made i believe 66 million dollars more than what they made under their own deal but the lower court addressed this see the lower court stated that the women's team requested and agreed to the deal because they wanted guarantees that the men didn't have see the women's national team is only looking at it from the upside proportion right how much could we have made but they're not looking at it from the downside perspective see the women had capped their downside because they got guaranteed money hundred thousand dollar year salaries think about during the pandemic the men made no money because they couldn't play any games so their downside was zero where the women's downside was a hundred thousand dollars and all of these benefits so the women's national team is saying well look look we could have made 66 million dollars more but then the court said well here you could have also made zero that's why you get guaranteed salaries that the men don't get and all the benefits next the women's national team says that the federation never offered the women the same deal as the men that the deal was just similar now to be fair the court did say that the women were offered the same pay structure as the men hold on a second nate that's not right even the players are saying that they were offered the exact same deal as the men do so now that the thing that worries me and we we can discuss you know this at greater length maybe some other time but the only issue is that megan led the team into signing a lesson equal cba we were so close to having equal pay in 2016. it was set forth it was offered to us so again we see a contradiction between what the women's team has said publicly and what they've said in their official legal filings we were so close to having equal pay in 2016. it was set forth it was offered to us well the next piece of evidence the women's team says that the court overlooked is that the experts confirmed that the agreements were nowhere near equal in value the women's team argues that the experts have confirmed that the agreement from the women as compared with the men were nowhere near equal in value lower court did accept that expert's findings but they reasoned that the women's team only wanted the upside that is the higher bonuses but none of the downsides of the men's deal that is no guaranteed money the men's deal could have been worth millions more but it could also be worth millions less in fact technically it could be worth zero because there's no guaranteed money it's salary versus commission and last but not least they argue that the women could have made more if they had been paid under the men's agreement now this is true but the court found that the men would have been paid more if they were under the women's agreement so now should both teams be able to sue for discrimination because they negotiated poor deals for themselves so this is why the u.s women's national team is asking a federal appeals court to overturn the judgment of the lower court you be the jury what do you think about this appeal do you think the women's team has good arguments against lower court findings if you want to go over all their arguments in detail visit me here on my channel and we'll go over the entire brief in longer technical detail and while you're there don't forget to subscribe now i want to thank my buddy on civil law he does fantastic work on his channel going in depth into these appeals cases my name is nathan lloyd you can check me out on locals.com click here for some more great content and i'm going to see you next time

Channel: Nate The Lawyer

Views: 540,756

Keywords: equal pay, us soccer, us womens soccer, uswnt lawsuit, wage gap, women’s world cup, uswnt equal pay lawsuit, joe biden, equal pay womens soccer, megan rapinoe speech, megan rapinoe cringe, hbo, hbo max, hbo max documentary, lfg, uswnt, uswnt lfg, us women’s national team, womens soccer documentary, lfg documentary, megan rapinoe, megan rapinoe documentary, soccer documentary, hbo max new documentary, equal pay us soccer, us womens soccer equal pay, Appeal, us soccer appeal

Id: W7cwTG0xXaw

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021