Wednesday, October 15, 2008

$3.4 Million Is "The Price of Retaliation"

We just learned that Florida Gulf Coach University will pay $3.4 million to settle a lawsuit filed by two former coaches, Jaye Flood and Holly Vaughn, who allege that they were terminated in retaliation for raising concerns about gender discrimination in the athletic department (more press about the settlement here and here). Their lawyer, Linda Correia called the 3.4 million figure "the price of retaliation."

Flood will get $2.965 million and Vaughn will take $435,000. FGCU has also agreed to submit to an independent review of Title IX compliance by an independent expert.

I am anxious to get this breaking news on the blog, so rather than summarizing the background here I will point you instead to our key prior posts: see here, here, here and here.

UPDATE: It was also reported that Wendy Morris's lawsuit recently settled for $850,000. Morris is the former university counsel who was terminated after she encouraged the university president to actually look into the coaches' complaints about gender discrimination before dismissing them as baseless. Background on Morris's case is here and here.