On Friday, sanity prevailed in federal court after a judge finally slapped down soccer star Megan Rapinoe and the U.S. Women’s National Team’s sham “equal pay” lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The decision has sparked widespread backlash, but when you set all the identity politics and outrage-mongering aside, it’s clearly correct based on the facts.
Federal Judge R. Gary Klausner considered the USWNT’s “equal pay” claim alleging that the women’s team faces sex-based pay discrimination compared to the U.S. men’s soccer team. He found it so baseless that he dismissed it without allowing it to proceed to trial. He did allow a few claims related to travel conditions to proceed, but the equal pay claim was the heart of the lawsuit, and it was rejected out of hand.
“The statements offered by Plaintiff [USWNT] are insufficient to establish a genuine dispute that [female players] are paid at a rate less than the rate paid to [male players],” the judge wrote in his decision. “Defendant [U.S. Soccer] has presented evidence that the [USWNT] was paid more on both a cumulative and an average per-game basis than the [men’s team].”
Cue the hysterical outrage.
True to her faux-victim style, Rapinoe tweeted, “We will never stop fighting for EQUALITY” in response to the decision. Teammate Ali Krieger said, “We will continue to fight like hell and get what we deserve.’
“We are shocked and disappointed with today’s decision, but we will not give up our hard work for equal pay,” a spokesperson for the USWNT said. “We are confident in our case and steadfast in our commitment to ensuring that girls and women who play this sport will not be valued as lesser just because of their gender. We have learned that there are tremendous obstacles to change. We know that it takes bravery and courage and perseverance to stand up to them.”
The only “obstacle to change” here is the facts, which do not support the fake feminist outrage from Rapinoe and others.
For one, the USWNT, while admirably accomplished for a women’s soccer team, is nowhere near an “equal level” of actual soccer ability compared to the men’s team. The simple fact is that men and women are biologically different and that top male athletes compete on an entirely different level. For reference, the USWNT lost by a humiliating 5-2 scoreline in an informal match against an under-15 men’s academy team. That’s right; they lost to teenage boys.
But even considering this stark difference, the entity which the USWNT sued, U.S. Soccer, actually pays them more than the men. Former U.S. Soccer Federation President Carlos Cordeiro wrote:
It’s true that FIFA, the body which hosts the men’s and women’s World Cup competitions, offers the men substantially higher prize figures than the women. But this is based on the huge differences in TV ratings between the competitions, not sexism, and more importantly, FIFA isn’t the defendant named in the USWNT’s lawsuit!
This entire thing from Rapinoe and her feminist friends has been a sham all along. It’s disgraceful the way privileged celebrities have contorted the facts to play the victim. Thankfully, sanity has now prevailed over fake outrage in federal court.
