*** UPDATE! VICTORY! *** On January 17, 2024, the Ninth Circuit vacated the district court’s decision, which had denied Taylor and her lacrosse teammates’ request to bring a class-action lawsuit against CSU Fresno. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit held that there is no actual conflict of interest between the plaintiffs (women’s lacrosse players) and the class they want to represent (all current and future women athletes, including non-lacrosse players). This is because the plaintiffs have only asked the court to require Fresno to comply with Title IX. If the court granted their request, Fresno could choose to comply with Title IX by reinstating other (non-lacrosse) women’s teams that have been cut. Or, Fresno could choose to reinstate no women’s teams at all and instead level down men’s teams. Since the plaintiffs’ lawsuit does not advocate for reinstating their own team over other women’s teams, there is no actual conflict between them and non-lacrosse players. We are glad that Taylor and her teammates will now have an opportunity to continue their lawsuit and show the court that they meet the other requirements necessary for bringing a class-action lawsuit.
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On December 13, 2022, NWLC joined an amicus brief led by Equal Rights Advocates to the Ninth Circuit in support of Taylor Anders and all current and future women athletes at California State University Fresno.
Taylor and her then-teammates on the women’s lacrosse team originally filed this lawsuit in 2021, alleging that Fresno’s athletics program was in violation of Title IX’s gender equity mandate. After Fresno cut the women’s lacrosse team, the plaintiffs asked a federal court in California to continue their lawsuit as a class action on behalf of all current and future women student-athletes at Fresno. However, the court denied their request, holding that women from one sports team cannot constitutionally represent women from other teams. When the plaintiffs pointed out that they wanted to represent both lacrosse and non-lacrosse women athletes, the court then held that doing so would deprive lacrosse players of sports-specific advocacy. In other words, in the court’s view, Taylor and her former lacrosse teammates were both too lacrosse-focused to adequately represent all women athletes and too non-lacrosse-focused to adequately represent lacrosse players. The amicus brief explains that the district court’s decision and its Catch-22 reasoning would eviscerate class action lawsuits as a vehicle for enforcing Title IX in women’s sports as intended by Congress, and, accordingly, the Ninth Circuit should reverse.