Hawaii’s agreement to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by female athletes at Campbell High School is a milestone in the movement toward gender parity in education, nationwide. There is no island pride in the fact that an Oahu high school has been a flashpoint for pushback against systemic sex discrimination in athletics. However, the settlement does raise the prospect that Hawaii schools can — and should — become future standard-bearers for education that prioritizes equal treatment for students, regardless of gender.
James Campbell High School in Ewa Beach is the state’s largest public high school, so it’s especially troubling that the school operated female sports teams as a blatant also-ran to male sports — and that the defendants, the Hawaii Department of Education (DOE) and the Oahu Interscholastic Association (OIA), resisted coming to terms for more than four years with the girls they were shortchanging.
The DOE and OIA must now fully embrace the lessons learned and remedies prescribed in their settlement, and get to work immediately at identifying and serving the needs and potential of its female athletes — not only at Campbell, but in public schools throughout the state. To do less for young women athletes than for men is to deny them benefits and opportunities that can serve them throughout their lives.
The case, first filed in 2018, charged — and documented — routine bias in favor of men’s sports at the school, in violation of federal legislation. Title IX, passed in 1972, states: “No person in the United States shall, on basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
It was the late U.S. Rep. Patsy Takemoto Mink of Hawaii who co-authored the landmark Title IX, now called the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act, decades before Campbell’s student athletes and their families sued. That irony was not lost on the nationwide press after a federal judge ruled that the case could proceed as a class action in July 2022 — the year that Title IX marked its 50th anniversary.
Hawaii’s students and their families should have been able to expect equal opportunity within the public school system and athletics programs in 2018, when the suit was filed. Instead, Campbell High failed to provide pool time for the women’s water polo team, so that they had to practice in the ocean; or to provide a women’s locker room, forcing female athletes to change clothes in makeshift spaces.
Without directly admitting fault, the DOE has now agreed to a seven-year comprehensive compliance plan to ensure Campbell offers “substantially equivalent” opportunities to play sports for male and female athletes, requiring that girls’ interest in playing sports in greater numbers be assessed and responded to. The school must also provide equal access to athletic facilities and training equipment, and benefits such as team transportation, scheduling of games and publicity. All that is for the good, and long overdue.
An independent evaluator will ensure follow-through, and properly, issue publicly available reports, maintaining transparency. A hotline and online complaint system will be created to report violations, and the federal court will retain jurisdiction over the agreement over the seven years.
The agreement also protects students from retaliation if they raise concerns about gender equity — sadly, an important concern. Notably, the lawsuit alleged that after students voiced concerns, the school tried to dissolve the water polo team, claiming required paperwork had not been submitted. That’s unconscionable.
Since the lawsuit was filed, change for the better has been initiated at Campbell and within the DOE, in recognition of Title IX’s value. All involved in providing athletic opportunities for Hawaii’s students must now build on these efforts, to become standard-bearers for gender equity and the advantages it provides individual students and Hawaii as a whole.
