The United States women’s national team filed a lawsuit against US Soccer earlier this year in March, alleging institutionalized gender discrimination. US Soccer has now responded, on Monday filing affirmative defenses to the issues raised in the complaint and maintaining that the decisions cited by the USWNT in their complaint were “for legitimate business reasons and not for any discriminatory or other unlawful purpose.”
USSF also includes in their arguments factors such as the teams having separate budgets, separate competitions, and huge differences in prize money. They reiterate that the men and women have different pay structures, although as we learned, the WNT offered to move from the salary-based model to a revenue-sharing model where they would earn more in years where USSF made more money and vice versa, but the federation declined.