Long Beach City College Settles Suit on Funding Women’s Sports Program

In a court settlement ending a 4 1/2-year-old challenge to sports funding at Long Beach City College, the school has agreed to expand its women’s athletic program.

The agreement, announced Thursday, settles a Superior Court suit filed by six LBCC coaches and a group of students who claimed that the college was violating state anti-sex discrimination laws by underfunding and understaffing women’s athletic programs.

Among other things, the settlement calls for LBCC to hire a full-time women’s athletic director, create a separate women’s training facility and hire three new full-time women’s coaches, a separate women’s athletic trainer and a sports information director. In addition, the school will pay the plaintiffs and their attorneys $85,000.

Wells Sloniger, the college’s vice president of student services, said school officials do not believe that they discriminated against women athletes. Although some men’s sports, such as football, receive more money than teams for women, the school funded teams in “every sport women were allowed to compete in,” he said.

“I do not agree that the athletic program has not been a good one,” Sloniger said, adding that the college agreed to the settlement to avoid the expense of a lengthy trial.