A former women’s volleyball coach can move forward with her lawsuit against Mt. San Antonio Community College and the Mt. San Antonio Community College District in which she alleges she was wrongfully fired in 2020 for advocating for female student athletes to be treated fairly and equitably, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Pomona Superior Court Judge Salvatore Sirna denied a defense motion to dismiss Allison Carey-Oliver’s case. Prior to the hearing, the plaintiff’s attorneys dropped her claims for intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
Claims remaining alive within Carey-Oliver’s suit include wrongful termination, gender discrimination, failure to prevent discrimination and conduct an adequate investigation, retaliation and both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
According to Carey-Oliver’s suit filed April 11, the defendants “chose to fire a great coach because she advocated for gender equality on behalf of herself, her program and her student athletes in an effort to silence her and others who might bring concerns forward.”
The plaintiff further alleges that she “was impacted by gender bias and stereotypes in the assessment of her performance and retaliated against for bringing forward concerns and complaints of gender inequities.”
Carey-Oliver, now 45, was hired in the summer of 2016 as a professor of kinesiology and was paid a stipend for serving as the school’s head women’s volleyball coach, the suit states. In fall 2018, Carey-Oliver received complaints about her coaching behavior from two of her student athletes that she did not find out about until December of that year, the suit states.
College attorneys noted the student criticisms in their court papers seeking dismissal of the plaintiff’s suit.
“Perhaps female college volleyball players, the ones who complained about Oliver, preferred not be sworn at, the subject of repeated use of the word (expletive) in games and in practice and thereby feeling belittled or disrespected by Coach Oliver,” the MSAC attorneys stated in their court papers.
Carey-Oliver maintains the school’s athletic director told her that an investigation cleared her of any wrongdoing, but defense lawyers contend in their court papers that she was put on administrative leave and that she “challenged every aspect of the district decisions that were adverse to her.”
Carey-Oliver also says she raised concerns over weight room usage for women’s volleyball being inequitable, that she believed fundraising opportunities were unequal and that she concluded that sports information for women did not match that of male sports.
“Coach Carey-Oliver and other female coaches were told that because they were women, they probably don’t know much about training athletes in the weight room,” according to the suit.
The plaintiff also believes she was judged differently compared to male coaches when it came to how she dressed for class.
During a meeting with Mt. SAC’s human resources office and the plaintiff’s tenure committee, Carey-Oliver was told she was prohibited from using curse words based on student complaints, which she believed was discriminatory given that “male coaches used curse words all the time,” the suit states.
Carey-Oliver’s tenure committee denied her tenure in December 2019 and she was notified two months later that she was being terminated at the end of the 2019-20 academic year, the suit states. Her appeal of her termination was denied in October, according to the suit, which further states that former and current players had shown support for her in person and in letters to the college Board of Trustees.
The tenure review that later led to Carey-Oliver’s termination was directly related to the complaints about her use of curse words, according to the suit, but the plaintiff alleges she was actually “terminated under pretext” and that the real reason she was stripped of her job was because she “repeatedly objected to defendants’ discriminatory practices.”
Carey-Oliver has experienced financial job benefit losses and also suffered humiliation, embarrassment and other emotional distress due to the loss of her job, the suit states.