Portz v. St. Cloud State University

Background

The plaintiffs were female student-athletes who attended or recently attended St. Cloud State University and were members of its varsity women’s tennis or Nordic skiing teams. They represented a certified class of present, prospective, and future female students who were harmed by and wanted to end sex discrimination in athletic participation opportunities and benefits.

After a seven-day bench trial, the court found in August 2019 that St. Cloud State had failed to comply with Title IX in allocating athletic participation opportunities and in providing treatment and benefits. The court found that this noncompliance had existed since at least 2014. It entered a permanent injunction requiring the university to take immediate steps to provide equitable opportunities and athletic-related treatment and benefits to female students. The injunction addressed support for the women’s tennis and Nordic skiing teams, the participation gap, facilities, the distribution of participation opportunities among support tiers, locker rooms, and continuing compliance reports to the court.

The defendants appealed the August 2019 findings and judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. They then moved to stay enforcement of the permanent injunction. The court understood the request as seeking to modify the injunction temporarily, rather than completely suspend enforcement, by reducing its terms to those in preliminary injunctions entered in 2016. Those earlier orders barred eliminating or reducing support for the women’s tennis and Nordic skiing teams and barred restricting those teams’ access to facilities, coaching, training, or competition; one order also allowed lawful employment decisions concerning Nordic skiing coaches.

Legal standard

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 62(d), while an appeal is pending from a final judgment granting an injunction, a court may suspend, modify, restore, or grant an injunction. The court considered four factors: whether the party seeking a stay was likely to succeed on the merits, whether it would suffer irreparable harm without a stay, whether a stay would substantially injure other interested parties, and where the public interest lay. The court identified likelihood of success as the most important factor but balanced all four factors.

Likelihood of success on appeal

The defendants challenged the court’s findings that St. Cloud State organized its sports into three support tiers, that women were underrepresented in the first two tiers and overrepresented in the third, and that the tier structure could be considered in evaluating Title IX compliance. The court concluded that the trial evidence supported its factual findings and that the defendants had not shown that those findings were clearly erroneous.

The court also rejected the argument that its use of tiers conflicted with guidance from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. That guidance rejected using “major” and “minor” sports as a way to compare men’s and women’s programs when doing so would disproportionately provide benefits or opportunities to one sex. The court concluded that the guidance did not prevent it from considering St. Cloud State’s tiered structure.

The court further explained that its Title IX findings did not depend on the tiering analysis. It found that St. Cloud State failed to provide equitable athletic participation opportunities on a program-wide basis and that male and female teams received significantly different treatment and benefits. The court stated that, even if the defendants succeeded on appeal concerning tiers, that success would not affect the findings of past and present discrimination. It therefore concluded that the defendants had not made a strong showing of likely success on appeal.

Irreparable harm to the defendants

St. Cloud State argued that it could suffer irreparable harm if it had to eliminate sports programs to comply with the permanent injunction. The court responded that it had not required the university to eliminate any team. The university could choose other compliance measures, including reducing financial support for all sports programs. Any harm resulting from the university’s decision to eliminate teams would be self-inflicted, the court said. Although compliance imposed a burden, the possible elimination of sports programs was neither certain nor imminent and therefore was not irreparable harm.

Harm to the plaintiffs and public interest

The court relied on its earlier finding that the plaintiffs and similarly situated female students would suffer continuing irreparable injury without an injunction. The earlier preliminary injunctions protected the two teams but did not address the additional inequalities in treatment and benefits that the permanent injunction covered. The court concluded that the proposed modification would not eliminate that harm and that pausing the permanent injunction would substantially injure female athletes at St. Cloud State.

The court also found that the public interest favored enforcement of antidiscrimination laws such as Title IX. It acknowledged the university’s budget concerns but stated that the permanent injunction did not require eliminating sports teams and that the university could pursue cost-containment strategies that did not discriminate against women.

Disposition

The court found that none of the four stay factors favored pausing the permanent injunction. Chief Judge John R. Tunheim denied the defendants’ Motion to Stay Judgment, Docket No. 394. The opinion does not decide the pending appeal; it decides only whether to pause or modify enforcement of the permanent injunction while that appeal was pending.