When St. Cloud State University announced in 2016 that it was eliminating several sports, including women’s Nordic skiing and women’s tennis, it would have been easy for all those athletes to transfer to a different school and complete their athletic eligibility - or just finish up their time at SCSU and be done.
But that’s not what one group of women chose to do.
Former SCSU Nordic skiers Haley Bock, Anna Lindell Forberg, Kaitlyn Babich Johnson, Maria Hauer Neslund and Kiersten Rohde, along with tennis athletes Abby Kantor Roden, Marilia Diversi, Alexie Portz, Jill Kedrowski and Fernanda Quintino decided to fight for their right to compete - and to fight for the female athletes who would come after them at St. Cloud State.
After learning in an early morning meeting in 2016 that their respective sports would be getting cut - but given little other information - the group took matters into their own hands. They found a law firm and lawyers willing to take the case, and they sued St. Cloud State University, arguing that the university had violated Title IX.
For nearly seven years the group has been working with their lawyers on the case. While they don’t all reside in Minnesota anymore - Bock moved to Colorado after graduation while Diversi is in Brazil and Quintino in Germany - they are all in on the case to make sure that SCSU can no longer treat athletes the way they were treated. They have given interviews, put their names on official court documents, given depositions and legal declarations, and attended hearings and trials in Minnesota’s federal courthouses in Minneapolis, Duluth and Fergus Falls.
In 2019, their work paid off when a federal judge found that SCSU had been in violation of Title IX since 2014 and ordered the university to take steps to bring gender equity to its athletic programs. SCSU is required to report its progress to the federal court every six months, wrapping up in 2023. The 10 plaintiffs are hoping this lawsuit will continue to address inequities in the department, increase Title IX awareness and improve the experience for all SCSU teams and athletes. As one shared, “this lawsuit will provide case law and help others in their journey to equality.”