A judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by a former women’s volleyball coach who sued the Mt. San Antonio Community College District, alleging she was wrongfully denied tenure and 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 granted a defense motion to toss out Allison Carey-Oliver’s case, which alleged gender discrimination, retaliation, failure to prevent discrimination, failure to conduct adequate investigation and wrongful termination in violation of public policy.
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 stated.
Carey-Oliver was denied tenure in December 2019 and was notified two months later that she was being terminated at the end of the 2019-20 academic year, the suit stated. Her appeal of her termination was denied in October 2022, according to the suit, which further stated 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.”
In his ruling, the judge noted that from July 2021 to February 2022, Oliver, the plaintiff’s faculty association and Mt. SAC participated in an arbitration per a collective bargaining agreement and the arbitrator found that the school’s decision to deny Carey-Oliver tenure was reasonable and the college board later denied Oliver’s appeal of the arbitrator’s decision.
The state Education Code allowed Oliver to seek judicial review of the arbitrator’s ruling, but her lawsuit does not indicate she did so, the judge wrote.
“Thus, by failing to set aside the arbitrator’s determination that the denial of tenure was reasonable, Oliver is now bound by that determination,” according to Sirna.
According to Carey-Oliver’s suit filed last 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 alleged 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 46, was hired in the summer of 2016 as a professor of kinesiology and was paid a stipend for serving as the school’s women’s volleyball coach, the suit stated. 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 stated.
Carey-Oliver maintained 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 the college’s efforts to publicize women’s sports did not match that for men’s 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.