Четыре пловчихи Хановерского колледжа подали иск о дискриминации по закону Title IX

Four members of the Hanover College women’s swimming team filed a Title IX lawsuit against the school on Tuesday for discriminating against female student-athletes. Hanover College, a Division III school in Hanover, Ind., announced it was cutting both its men’s and women’s swimming teams in March, with “facility maintenance concerns, projected increases in operational costs, and declining roster size” among the reasons mentioned by Vice President for Athletics Mark Shook in an email sent to donors at the time. On Tuesday, women’s team captain Lucy Schoenlein, along with teammates Tallulah Frazier, Shelby Geraghty and Anna Williams, filed the class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, accusing Hanover of depriving women equal opportunities to participate in varsity sports. “Title IX requires schools to give women and men equal opportunities to participate in varsity sports,” said Schoenlein. “But Hanover College has been depriving women of equal opportunities for decades – and now it’s eliminated the women’s swimming team. So, we’re going to fight for our team, our teammates, and all of the women at Hanover. This sex discrimination has to stop.” The swimmers are being represented by Arthur Bryant of Arthur Bryant Law, who has served as lead counsel of several other women’s swim & dive programs suing their schools on Title IX grounds. According to Bryant, Hanover cut both the men’s and women’s swim teams despite the school already providing women with approximately 170 fewer opportunities than required by law. “Hanover’s elimination of its women’s swimming team is a flagrant violation of Title IX,” said Bryant. “According to the most recent publicly available information, women were 50.34% of Hanover’s undergraduates in 2024-25, but they were given only 34.86% of the opportunities to participate in varsity sports. Hanover needs to add around 170 opportunities for women to reach gender equity. It should not be eliminating any women’s teams.” The Hanover swim program was relatively new, having competed for the first time in the 2018-19 season. Last season, the program had eight female swimmers on its roster and five male, meaning the school’s gender disparity in terms of athletic participation opportunity increases with the removal of both teams. “This is sex discrimination, plain and simple,” said Kimberly Dougherty of Justice Law Collaborative, P.C. “Hanover created its varsity swimming team a decade ago. The team thrived when it had a full-time coach, but now, after giving it only a part-time coach and no assistant, Hanover is saying women don’t have the interest and ability to participate in varsity swimming. The problem isn’t the women. It’s Hanover.” According to Arthur Bryant Law, counsel for the swimmers sent a letter to the school in May requesting a meeting to discuss the Title IX implications of the decision to cut the women’s team. The meeting was accepted, but “the school refused to agree to continue the women’s team and come into compliance with Title IX,” Arthur Bryant Law said in its press release. “So, the women filed suit.” In addition to the lawsuit, the four swimmers also filed a emergency motion for a preliminary injunction preserving the women’s swimming team and all other women’s teams at the school while the case proceeds. Last season, the Hanover women’s team placed 5th out of seven teams at the 2026 Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference Championships, moving up one spot from the year prior, while the men took 6th out of six teams.