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Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn and Hope Solo, five of soccer’s biggest stars, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the women’s national team against the U.S. Soccer Federation on Wednesday. The lawsuit is seeking equal pay for equal work and demanding an investigation into discriminatory practices. Citing figures from the USSF’s 2015 financial report, the complaint argues that players on the women’s national team earned nearly one-fourth that of what the men’s team earned, even though the women’s team made more money. ESPN reported that the women’s team generated nearly $20 million more than the men’s national team last season.
The complaint states “There are no legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for this gross disparity of wages, nor can it be explained away by any bona fide seniority, merit or incentive system or any factor other than sex.” While we’ve not seen this complaint and can’t comment on the specifics of it, we’re disappointed about this action,” said the U.S. Soccer Federation in a statement. “We’ve been a world leader in women’s soccer and are proud of the commitment we’ve made to building the women’s game in the United States over the past 30 years.”
The complaint comes less than a year after the women won the World Cup for the third time, something the men’s team has never done. “The numbers speak for themselves,” Solo said. “We are the best in the world, have three World Cup championships, four Olympic championships, and the [men] get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”
This is not the first time the USWNT has brought up issues of gender discrimination. It became national news when the USWNT refused to play a World Cup Victory friendly match against Trinidad and Tobago on poor quality field turf after the poor field led to Rapine tearing her ACL in her right knee. The women even had to play on turf, instead of natural grass, for the World Cup, while the USMNT hasn’t played on a turf field in the United States since 2014. The women, on the other hand, played less than 70 percent of their games in the U.S. on grass in the same time frame.
“We want to play in top-notch, grass-only facilities like the U.S. men’s national team,” Morgan said. “We want to have equitable and comfortable travel accommodations and we simply want equal treatment.”
