Women demand $66 million in soccer gender discrimination lawsuit

Megan Rapinoe kicks
(Image credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images)

Members of the U.S. women's national soccer team are requesting $66 million in damages under their gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation, according to papers filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The trial in the case is scheduled to start in early May.

Players on the women's national team filed the lawsuit last March saying the fact that their players on the men's team were paid more reflected institutionalized gender discrimination. U.S. Soccer said in a statement that the women players "are paid differently because they specifically asked for and negotiated a completely different contract than the men's national team," one that "provides significant additional benefits" the men don't get, including guaranteed annual salaries and paid child-care assistance, The Associated Press reports.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.