Biediger v. Quinnipiac University

This suit arose when Quinnipiac University (Quinnipiac) (defendant) decided to eliminate its women’s volleyball team. Stephanie Biediger (plaintiff) and several other volleyball team members filed suit against Quinnipiac under a Title IX claim on the basis that the school failed to afford equal participation opportunities in varsity sports to female students. At times relevant to this suit, 61.87 percent of Quinnipiac’s undergraduate students were female. When the volleyball program was eliminated, Quinnipiac also eliminated the men’s golf and outdoor track-and-field teams. The school also established a new varsity team for women’s competitive cheerleading. However, the trial court in Biediger’s suit found that the competitive cheerleading team was not actually a sport and that Quinnipiac also had double-counted female athletes by counting 11 roster athletes on the women’s track-and-field teams who were actually members of the cross-country team but were redshirting or injured and could not participate in cross-country at that time. After those adjustments, Quinnipiac’s varsity student-athletes were 58.25 percent female, a gap of 3.62 percent from the university’s enrollment data. Accordingly, at the bench trial of this matter, Quinnipiac was found to have violated Title IX and been subject to an injunction against further violations. Quinnipiac appealed, arguing that cheerleading was a valid sport, the counting error on cross-country should be disregarded, and the 3.62 percent gap was not a sufficient disparity to establish a Title IX violation. The argument on cheerleading was extensive, with Quinnipiac noting that cheerleading was a judged sport more akin to gymnastics than traditional sideline cheerleading. Biediger noted that the competition in cheerleading has no championship and included events open to nonscholastic participants or even all-star teams and that each cheerleading event was judged by its own standards. As for the statistical disparity, although Quinnipiac noted that no two percent disparity had caused a finding of noncompliance, no black-letter test existed.