U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Beatty
EAST ST. LOUIS — A former women's softball coach at Greenville University has snagged a win in her effort to sue her former employer, claiming she was discriminated against and unjustly fired for allegedly attempting to fight for equal facilities and staffing for the girl's softball program.
On March 6, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark A. Beatty, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, rejected Greenville's request to dismiss the Title IX lawsuit lodged by plaintiff Angela K. Sheets.
Sheets had filed suit in 2023, shortly after she was fired as women's softball coach at the school in Greenville.
In her complaint, Sheets asserted players on the team and school administration allegedly worked to undermine her from the beginning of her tenure in 2021. According to the complaint, Sheets claims players allegedly lodged false accusations of mistreatment against her in the two years she served as coach. And she asserted school administration took those accusations into account when evaluating her job performance in both 2021 and 2022.
Further, according to the complaint, the school allegedly refused to provide her with assistant coaches to help her cover her coaching responsibilities, even after she grew the program to more than 30 players and even while the school allegedly provided assistant coaches to work with men's programs.
However, Sheets asserts she particularly fell into disfavor with administration in 2022 when she protested school plans to build a new multimillion-dollar sports complex which allegedly did not include equal designated locker room and training facilities for women's athletics.
According to the complaint, the women's softball team was allegedly required to "share the football locker room with the women's track team."
According to court documents, Sheets was eventually "gradually excluded from all meetings about the complex."
According to court documents, the school allegedly launched a Title IX investigation against Sheets, allegedly to look into players' complaints against her, which Sheets asserted were false.
She further claimed she was allegedly undermined and ultimately replaced by a male coach, who was identified as a "close friend" of the school's athletic director and who had been hired as a "part-time assistant." Sheets asserts that male coach also worked to undermine her as head coach.
Greenville sought to dismiss her lawsuit, asserting, in part, that her claims under Title IX are preempted by her employment discrimination claims.
While the judge dismissed one of her counts, Beatty said Sheets had viable claims for employment discrimination under Title VII and for her claim that the school had improperly retaliated against her for advocating on behalf of the women's sports programs when designing the new facilities.
The judge noted Sheets' termination followed close behind her disagreement over the allocation of sex-based facilities in the new athletic complex.
And, while that is normally not enough to substantiate her claims, Beatty noted Sheets provided other pertinent details, including her exclusion from planning meetings and the school's alleged refusal to provide her "with a fair process during the investigation," among others, which "reasonably infer a causal connection."
"Therefore, Plaintiff has adequately pleaded the existence of a but-for causal connection between her protected activities and her termination," Beatty wrote.
Sheets is represented in the case by attorney Colt W. Johnson, of the firm of Hasselberg Rock Bell & Kuppler, of Peoria.
Greenville University is represented by attorneys Christian M. Poland and Kathryn P. Scott, of the firm of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, of Chicago and St. Louis.
