Sportico: Title IX Battleground Quinnipiac Sued for Demoting Women’s Rugby

Christine Brown & Partners is representing Quinnipiac University women’s rugby players in their Title IX lawsuit against the university, as detailed by Sportico.

Quinnipiac University, long at the center of gender-equity legal battles in collegiate athletics, now faces a new federal lawsuit over its decision to downgrade its women’s varsity rugby program to a club sport.

In a class-action complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, 23 rugby players—who either played for Quinnipiac this past season or committed to play in 2026-27—have accused the school of Title IX violations. The suit names the university, its board of trustees, president Marie Hardin and athletic director Greg Amodio as defendants.

The plaintiffs, who say they have brought their case to “address and remedy QU’s historic and ongoing pattern of retaliatory and discriminatory conduct,” are seeking a preliminary injunction requiring the immediate reinstatement of the Bobcats program to its previous varsity status with no reduction in its funding.

A university spokesperson declined to comment.

Friday’s filing comes just a week after Quinnipiac settled a Title IX lawsuit filed by its former head women’s lacrosse coach, Tanya Kotowicz, whose departure in January 2024 was announced in a four-sentence press release that offered no explanation.

In her case, Kotowicz said she was fired by the school over “false and pretextual allegations.” The school’s student newspaper, The Quinnipiac Chronicle, previously reported that Kotowicz had been accused of forcing an injured athlete to play in a scrimmage.

Kotowicz’s litigation, which was removed from state to federal court, alleged a pattern of discrimination during her eight years coaching Quinnipiac. According to her complaint, she was questioned about her sexual orientation, denied equitable compensation, and retaliated against after raising concerns about her players’ health and safety.

Terms of the settlement have not been made public, and Quinnipiac previously declined to comment on the matter.

The private institution, based in Hamden, Conn., announced on April 14 that rugby would lose its varsity status ahead of the next academic year, a move the school described as part of a post-House v. NCAA “strategic realignment” that would ensure its ongoing efforts at Title IX compliance.

Though best known nationally for its D-I hockey team, Quinnipiac had established itself as home to one of the country’s premier collegiate rugby programs, which has produced 18 All-Americans and captured three consecutive national championships from 2015 through 2017.

The lawsuit filed by the rugby players, who are being represented by attorneys Christine Brown and Lori Bullock, is among the first Title IX-related actions challenging an individual school’s application of the House settlement. Beyond rugby, it seeks to compel Quinnipiac to distribute revenue-sharing payments and other NIL support in compliance with federal gender-equity laws.

“By removing women’s rugby from varsity status while preserving and expanding men’s participation opportunities,” the lawsuit says, “Defendants denied female student athletes equal access to the varsity platform through which post-House athletic benefits, opportunities, visibility, support, and resources are administered.”

(Brown previously authored an amicus curiae brief in the Ninth Circuit appeal of House, arguing that the settlement should not have been approved because it violates Title IX.)

In their complaint, the Quinnipiac plaintiffs decry the “especially harmful” timing of the university’s rugby pull, which was announced just as final examinations were beginning at the school. The move, they argue, left current players and incoming recruits with little opportunity to pursue alternative academic or athletic options.

The plaintiffs contend that the decision to downgrade rugby was neither a legitimate budgetary measure nor a bona fide effort to advance the interest of female athletes, but rather an act of retaliation. The complaint notes that longtime head rugby coach Becky Carlson had for years repeatedly and vociferously raised concerns about the university’s treatment of her players.

The news of the program’s downgrading sparked widespread backlash from both the rugby community and Quinnipiac supporters. Opposition efforts have included a Change.org petition that has garnered more than 32,000 signatures, a GoFundMe campaign, and a public rebuke from Quinnipiac alumna and USA Rugby sensation Ilona Maher.

“Shame on you,” Maher wrote in an Instagram story to her 5.5 million followers, tagging QU’s athletics department.

Carlson, in a statement to the local NBC affiliate, said the move demonstrated the university’s dearth of “forward-thinking leaders.” According to her LinkedIn profile, her position as head coach concluded last month.

The litigation comes 17 years after Quinnipiac became the focus of a seminal Title IX battle, stemming from the university’s 2009 decision to eliminate the women’s volleyball team. In an effort to pass gender-equity muster, the school attempted to replace volleyball with women’s “competitive cheer,” a sport that lacked recognition by the NCAA and the Department of Education.

Biediger v. Quinnipiac became one of the most consequential Title IX cases in college sports history. After losing at both the district court and appellate levels, Quinnipiac abandoned its plans to vivisect volleyball. 

Biediger also had broader ramifications across collegiate athletics. In its aftermath, two cheer-adjacent sports—Acrobatics & Tumbling and STUNT—gained traction as Title IX-compliant participation opportunities for women. Both have since achieved full NCAA championship recognition and have been introduced at several D-I institutions as more cost-effective substitutes for other female sports.

In 2013, Quinnipiac entered into a consent decree requiring the school to retain volleyball and prohibiting the elimination of any other QU varsity women’s team without replacing it with an NCAA championship sport offering comparable participation opportunities.

The decree imposed specific requirements for women’s rugby, as well. Quinnipiac agreed to provide the team with an exclusive home venue free of “holes, dangerous rocks or other hazards,” increase scholarship support to the equivalent of nine full rides, and employ both a full-time head coach and full-time assistant. Four years later, in 2017, the university unveiled a dedicated 350-seat rugby pitch on its Mount Carmel campus as part of $15 million investment in women’s athletic facilities.

That same year, according to the rugby players’ lawsuit, Carlson filed a formal complaint against Quinnipiac with the Office for Civil Rights, alleging that the school was still failing to provide equal treatment and benefits for male and female athletes when it came to training, facilities and publicity.

Carlson has continued to raise similar concerns in the years since, both privately and publicly, including in response to her coaching cohort Kotowicz’s departure two and a half years ago. In a Jan. 3, 2024, post on X, Carlson criticized the university’s vague announcement of the lacrosse coaching change as “outrageous,” adding that she was “disgusted” by what had occurred.

Now, the rugby players allege that Carlson’s outspokenness likely contributed to the sidelining of their sport.

“Rather than remedy the unequal benefits, treatment, services, resources, and support provided to female student athletes,” the lawsuit states, “QU moved to eliminate the women’s varsity rugby team.”

The dispute could turn, in part, on rugby’s status within the NCAA structure. Collegiate rugby is currently recognized as an NCAA “emerging sport”—as opposed to a championship sport like volleyball—a distinction Quinnipiac will likely emphasize in its defense.