Defending Women’s World Cup Champions USA begin legal action due to discrimination

The 28 members of the United States women’s national team will take legal action against the US Soccer Federation (USSF).

The discrimination lawsuit is in relation to working conditions and equal pay and seeks to represent any current or former players from the women’s national team since 4 February 2015.

The lawsuit, filed with the US District Court in Los Angeles, stated: “Despite the fact that these female and male players are called upon to perform the same job responsibilities on their teams and participate in international competitions for their single common employer, the USSF, the female players have been consistently paid less money than their male counterparts.

“This is true even though their performance has been superior to that of the male players, with the female players, in contrast to male players, becoming world champions.”

“The USSF has admitted that it pays its female player employees less than its male player employees and has gone so far as to claim that ‘market realities are such that the women do not deserve to be paid equally to the men’,” the court papers continued.

“The USSF admits to such purposeful gender discrimination even during times when the [women]earned more profit, played more games, won more games, earned more championships, and/or garnered higher television audiences.”

The US Women’s team have won the World Cup on three occasions; 1991, 1999 and 2015 while the best finish for the men’s team is still third place in 1930.

This is not the first time that US players have filed such a complaint. In 2016, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn and Hope Solo filed a wage-discrimination action against the USSF in which they said they were paid less than half of what the male USA players receive.

It is hoped that US Soccer will respond to both players associations and provide a solution to move forward in a way that gives all US soccer players fair and equal compensation but so far the USSF has failed to comment on the legal action.

However, the United States National Soccer Team Players Association, the US players’ union, has said it supported the women’s team and “the efforts to achieve equal pay”.

Thailand, Chile and Sweden are the USA’s group opponents when they aim to defend their title in France this summer.