Judge Dismisses Coach's Retaliation Suit Against Moorhead State

In March we blogged about Eric Swanbeck, former women's soccer coach at Minnesota State University - Moorhead, who alleged in a lawsuit against the university that he was fired for filing a Title IX complaint on behalf of his team.

Earlier this week, however, a county judge dismissed all claims against MSUM. As we noted in the earlier post, the university claimed that Swanbeck was fired because his behavior had generated complaints from athletes and parents. After hearing the evidence, the judge agreed that the university fired Swanbeck for legitimate reasons, namely, forcing athletes to play while injured, being emotionally and physically abusive to them and causing them to quit the team in large numbers, and violating NCAA rules by taking an ineligible player on a road trip. With such strong evidence to support the university's explanation for why Swanbeck was not renewed, the judge could not find that it is pretextual of a discriminatory motive.