failed to implement “policies or procedures designed to cure the myriad areas of general noncompliance with Title IX.” Id. at 1108.
The district court also ruled that Sweetwater violated Title IX when it retaliated against Plaintiffs by firing the Castle Park softball coach, Chris Martinez, after the father of two of the named plaintiffs complained to school administrators about “inequalities for girls in the school’s athletic programs.” Id. at 1108; see id. at 1115. The district court found that Coach Martinez was fired six weeks after the Castle Park athletic director told him he could be fired at any time for any reason—a comment the coach understood to be a threat that he would be fired “if additional complaints were made about the girls’ softball facilities.” Id. at 1108.
Borrowing from “Title VII cases to define Title IX’s applicable legal standards,” the district court concluded (1) that Plaintiffs engaged in protected activity when they complained to Sweetwater about Title IX violations and when they filed their complaint; (2) that Plaintiffs suffered adverse actions—such as the firing of their softball coach, his replacement by a less experienced coach, cancellation of the team’s annual awards banquet in 2007, and being unable to participate in a Las Vegas tournament attended by college recruiters—that caused their “long-term and successful softball program” to be “significantly disrupted”; and (3) that a causal link between their protected conduct and Sweetwater’s retaliatory actions could “be established by an inference derived from circumstantial evidence”—in this case, “temporal proximity.” Id. at 1113–14. Finally, the district court rejected Sweetwater’s non-retaliatory reasons for firing Coach Martinez, concluding that they were “not credible and are pretextual.” Id. at 1114. The district court
