Concordia University's Title IX Mess: The Lawsuit, the Fallout, and Why This Was So Obvious
Let me get this straight. You’re telling me Concordia University Irvine, a private school that apparently has a direct line to God, looked at its budget and decided the only way to stay afloat was to axe four sports teams to save a measly $550,000 a year? You’re telling me this was a painful, necessary decision made in the face of “increasing operational costs” and a collegiate landscape in flux?
Okay, fine. I’ll bite. Tough times call for tough measures.
Except, a week—a single week—after making this supposedly heart-wrenching decision, the school’s athletic director, Crystal Rosenthal, blasted out an email to the remaining athletes. And what was in that email? A tearful apology for the cuts? A somber reflection on sacrifice? Offcourse not. It was a boast. A victory lap. A celebration of the school’s new, shiny, $25.5 million athletic infrastructure project.
This is a bad look. No, 'bad look' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of corporate double-speak. You don't get to plead poverty while simultaneously commissioning a gold-plated throne. It’s like a landlord evicting a family because he "can't afford the upkeep," then immediately starting construction on a marble lobby with a waterfall. Give me a break.
The Most Predictable Lawsuit in History
So, what happened next? The most predictable thing in the world. A bunch of female swimmers and tennis players, who I imagine were a little ticked off about their careers being flushed to save the equivalent of a rounding error on a construction budget, filed a lawsuit. They claimed that by cutting their teams, the school was violating Title IX.
And here’s where the math—the real math, not the PR department's math—comes in. Women make up 59% of Concordia’s student body. Yet, they were only getting 51.2% of the spots on athletic teams. To comply with Title IX, which is only, you know, a 50-year-old federal law, the school needed to add about 100 spots for women, not subtract them.
A federal judge looked at these numbers, looked at the university’s sob story about being broke, then looked at the receipts for the $25.5 million athletic palace, and did exactly what any sane person would do. He granted a preliminary injunction, meaning Concordia University told to reinstate women’s teams while Title IX lawsuit plays out.
Did the university’s administration really think this would go unnoticed? Did they believe that no one would connect the dots between cutting women’s sports and building a "state-of-the-art weight room"? Or is it just pure, unadulterated arrogance?
And this ain't some isolated incident. Its a pattern we’ve seen before. Since 2020, at least eight other schools—from big names like Iowa and UConn to smaller colleges—have tried to pull the exact same move. They announce cuts, get sued for violating Title IX, and a judge slaps them on the wrist and tells them to put the teams back. It’s a tedious, expensive, and embarrassing cycle. Why do they keep trying? Do they think the law just... doesn't apply to them this time?
A Temporary Win in a Never-Ending War
Now, before the athletes start celebrating too hard, let's read the fine print. Judge Fred W. Slaughter’s ruling is a preliminary injunction. It’s a legal timeout. He’s forcing the school to keep the teams running while the lawsuit plays out. He even acknowledged that Concordia doesn't necessarily have to keep these specific teams forever to comply with the law.
The university has already announced it's adding women’s lacrosse. Why? Because it’s a way to add a bunch of roster spots on the cheap and try to balance the scales. So what’s the endgame here? Will Concordia actually get its act together and figure out what gender equity means? Or will they just play a shell game, waiting for the lawsuit to end so they can cut swimming and tennis again, claiming they’ve "fixed" the problem by adding another sport?
This isn’t about sustainability; it’s about priorities. The school decided that shiny new facilities for the remaining—and presumably, more important—sports were a better investment than the careers of a few dozen swimmers and tennis players. They made a calculated bet that they could get away with it. They lost. For now.
They have to bring the teams back, fund them, and staff them. But you just know they’re already in a boardroom somewhere, huddled over a spreadsheet, trying to find the next loophole, because for them, these athletes are just numbers, and they always think…
They're Not Sorry, They're Just Caught
Let's be brutally honest. Concordia University isn't having some moral awakening about Title IX. They didn't suddenly realize the value of their female athletes. They got caught. They ran a cynical cost-benefit analysis that blew up in their faces, and now they're being forced to do the right thing by a federal court. This isn't a story of redemption. It's a story of what happens when blatant hypocrisy meets a federal statute with teeth. The university will comply, not because it's right, but because it's legally cornered. And that's the whole pathetic story.