Former Lafayette College Athletic Director Eve Atkinson will get another chance to litigate her discrimination/retaliation claim against her former employer and its president.
The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed, in part, a lower court’s ruling for Lafayette College, noting that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education, 544 U.S. 167, 125, S. Ct. 1497 (2005) means that Title IX’s private right of action “encompasses claims of retaliation against an individual because he or she has complained about sex discrimination.”
While Atkinson won on one front, she lost most of her other arguments that were ties to her claims for breach of contract, gender discrimination and retaliation (at least as far as it relates to Title VII).
Atkinson became athletic director, as well as department head of physical education and athletics, at Lafayette in 1989. In 1996, Atkinson began raising gender equity issues, submitting various plans to a committee of the Board of Trustees that were designed to ensure compliance with Title IX. The plaintiff claimed that as a direct result of her initiatives she was physically threatened by the school’s dean of students and ultimately told that her contract would be terminated on June 30, 2001.
Atkinson sued Lafayette and its president, Arthur J. Rothkopf, charging that her termination was based on gender and in retaliation for her insistence that the school comply with Title IX. Further, she alleged that the school’s failure to listen to her side of the story violated her contractual rights as a tenured professor.
The district court granted summary judgment, spawning Atkinson’s appeal.
The Third Circuit concurred with the findings of the district court on all of the claims. On gender discrimination, it noted that “faced with legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons for
Lafayette College’s actions, the burden of proof rested with Atkinson to demonstrate that the reasons proffered were pretextual and that gender was a determinative factor in the
decision. See Watson v. SEPTA, 207 F.3d 207, 215 (3d Cir. 2000). She has failed to satisfy her burden.”
As for the retaliation claim, it also found for Lafayette, noting that “the criticisms made
by Atkinson pertained only to the treatment of coaches of women’s sports, as opposed to the treatment of coaches who were women. As such, Atkinson’s retaliation claim is more
properly characterized as a claim predicated on activities in support of Title IX, rather than a claim predicated on activities protected under Title VII.”
Fortunately for Atkinson, Jackson changed the playing field for her.
“The basis for the District Court’s dismissal in Atkinson’s case for failure to state a claim for relief under Title IX is inconsistent with the decision in Jackson. Accordingly, the
dismissal of Atkins’s Title IX retaliation claim must be vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings consistent with Jackson.”
Atkinson v. Lafayette College et al., 3d Cir.; No. 03-3426; 8/21/06
Attorneys of Record: (for appellant) Alan B. Epstein and Jennifer L. Myers of Spector, Gadon & Rosen P.C. in Philadelphia, PA. (for appellee) John G. Harkins, Jr. and Neill C. Kling of Harkins Cunningham in Philadelphia, PA; Barry Simon and Dara P. Newman of Simon Moran in Philadelphia, PA.
