University of Iowa athletics department administrators ordered that a woman be hired over male candidates for an assistant track coaching job regardless of qualifications, a 2013 internal email from the head coach alleged.
Lawyers for a male coach who says he was illegally passed over portrayed the email, which the lawyers received last week as part of a lawsuit against the university, as a smoking gun that would help prove his gender discrimination allegations. “It’s in writing: The administration said, ‘We want a female in that position,’ ” said Brooke Timmer, a lawyer for the coach, Mike Scott, who is now an assistant at Missouri State.