While the US Women’s National Team makes its final preparations for the 2020 Olympics, it will finally get its date in court.
A trial date for the team’s gender discrimination lawsuit against US Soccer has been scheduled for May 5, 2020, District Judge R. Gary Klausner announced, according to multiple reports.
USWNT filed its case seeking equal pay in March, and since then, the team won its second straight World Cup. It will be preparing for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, which begins next July, when the trial goes to court unless the two sides can reach a settlement before then.
Both parties had reportedly requested a trial date after the Olympics, but their wishes were not met.
Mediation talks broke down last week with the US Soccer Federation as the USWNT continued to fight for pay equal to the men’s team. US Soccer claimed the counsel for the USWNT “took an aggressive and ultimately unproductive approach.”
“That’s not true. That’s definitely not true, and we set the posture as the players in our talks,” captain Megan Rapinoe said Thursday on “CBS This Morning.” “We came ready and prepared and willing to have the conversation.”
In July, US Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro released a letter detailing that the federation paid out more money to the women’s team than the men’s team between 2010 and 2018, which the USWNT believes is misleading.
“We are very confident that if this needs to go to litigation that we have a great case,” Christen Press said during the television interview last week. “I think that we will go confidently into that because it’s based on a very simple principle that we think is fair and right, and it is the law.”