Portz v. St. Cloud State University
- John Tunheim
- 0:16-cv-01115
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 7
In Portz v. St. Cloud State University, Judge Tunheim denied plaintiffs’ request to modify the injunction but ordered added compliance documents.
The ruling affected the female student-athlete plaintiffs, St. Cloud State University, Minnesota State Colleges & Universities, and the court’s process for monitoring compliance with the permanent injunction.
What happened
Portz v. St. Cloud State University involved female student-athletes who alleged that the university violated Title IX through unequal athletic opportunities and sex-based differences in treatment and benefits. After a bench trial, the court ordered the university and Minnesota State Colleges & Universities to submit reports every six months about their compliance with Title IX.
The plaintiffs asked the court to modify that permanent injunction so the defendants would have to provide 15 categories of documents with their reports. They argued that the reports already submitted were conclusory and lacked enough supporting evidence.
The court denied the motion to modify the injunction. Judge Tunheim clarified that the defendants should provide supporting documents when practicable, ordered them to supplement their first three reports with specified records, and required future disputes about the reports’ supporting evidence to go first to the Magistrate Judge.
The detailed version
- Portz v. St. Cloud State University · No. 0:16-cv-01115
- John Tunheim
- May 3, 2021
Background
The plaintiffs are female student-athletes who attended or recently attended St. Cloud State University and participated on the women’s tennis or women’s Nordic skiing teams. They alleged that St. Cloud State violated Title IX by providing unequal athletic participation opportunities and unequal treatment and benefits based on sex.
After a seven-day bench trial, the court found that, since at least 2014, St. Cloud State was not complying with Title IX in its allocation of athletic participation opportunities and treatment and benefits. The court entered a permanent injunction requiring St. Cloud State and Minnesota State Colleges & Universities, which the opinion refers to jointly as “SCSU,” to submit six-month reports monitoring their compliance with the court’s orders and with Title IX.
SCSU submitted three reports addressing participation opportunities, treatment and benefits, and differences in the financial support tiers assigned to men’s and women’s athletic programs. The plaintiffs argued that the first two reports were conclusory and insufficiently supported by documentary evidence. They then moved to modify the permanent injunction and requested 15 categories of documents to accompany the reports.
Analysis
The court explained that a modification changes the parties’ legal relationship and is generally appropriate when changed circumstances require altering an injunction to serve the purpose for which it was issued. A clarification, by contrast, restates the existing relationship in new terms without changing it.
The court concluded that modifying the permanent injunction was unnecessary. It nevertheless determined that effective monitoring required more than conclusory statements about SCSU’s progress. The court therefore clarified that SCSU should support its progress reports with documentary evidence when practicable.
The court found some of the plaintiffs’ requested categories reasonable and ordered SCSU to use them to supplement the first, second, and third reports. The required materials included athletic scholarship and recruiting budgets; NCAA revenue-and-expense summaries; SCSU’s Athletic Department Comprehensive Plan; specified coaching and salary records; financial-tiering records for varsity teams; specified National Letter of Intent signings; Nordic skiing recruiting-visit forms; and squad lists, Change of Status Forms, and Season of Competition Reports for the teams in SCSU’s sports portfolio.
The court also ordered that future disputes about whether the documentary evidence supporting the six-month reports was sufficient must first be addressed in a conference with the Magistrate Judge before either side could file motions about those reports.
Disposition
The court denied the plaintiffs’ Motion to Modify the Permanent Injunction. It separately ordered the defendants to supplement the first three reports with the specified documentary evidence and ordered the parties to bring future disputes about the sufficiency of report documentation to the Magistrate Judge before filing motions.
Read the full 7-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.