Former Alabama cheerleading coach sues school officials, claims gender discrimination (updated)Published: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 5:10 PM By Kevin Scarbinsky, Birmingham News BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - Two years after she was fired, former University of Alabama cheerleading coach Debbie Greenwell has filed a civil lawsuit against AD Mal Moore, executive AD Dave Hart, university president Robert Witt and the school's trustees.Greenwell is asking the court for her job back, for back and forward pay with interest and for a declaration that Alabama violated Title IX, the federal law that bans gender discrimination in schools.According to the lawsuit, Greenwell, who became Alabama's director of cheerleaders in 1987, was making $85,000 when she was fired Feb. 2, 2009 "without just cause and without due process." The lawsuit says she was fired 10 months before she was eligible to retire.The suit contends that Alabama fired her and denied her money that she'd earned "because of her complaints about Title IX inequities in how the athletes under her direction were treated, and as a result of her complaints about her compensation."The lawsuit compares Greenwell's income of $85,000 to that of Alabama football coach Nick Saban, whose original contract called for an average annual compensation of $4 million.[Click here to read the lawsuit.]The lawsuit says that, before Saban was hired, Greenwell's annual income of $85,000 was divided between a $35,000 annual salary and about $50,000 from a percentage of the income generated by her summer cheerleading camp.After Saban was hired, the lawsuit says, Moore "called Greenwell in and told her that he was going to increase her salary from $35,000 to $50,000, but he also informed her that her percentage of camp earnings would be capped at $35,000, in effect limiting her income to $85,000 on a permanent basis, despite her extraordinary performance of the difficult job, the fact that she worked year round and had personally grown the camps to the profit-making level outdone only by the football program."The lawsuit also says that Greenwell's superiors ignored requests from parents of cheerleaders and herself to provide "academic support equivalent to that provided to the other intercollegiate scholarship athletes."The lawsuit says that Greenwell was "told by various university officials that she did not 'deserve' more money because she was not actually a coach, as the cheerleaders are not an NCAA-regulated sport."Greenwell's attorney, Donna Smalley, said in an interview, "The NCAA is not mentioned anywhere in the Equal Pay Act."The lawsuit argues that "the duties and responsibilities of Greenwell's position are in fact identical to (those) of any other coach of an intercollegiate sports team" at Alabama. The lawsuit says that Greenwell was identified as the cheerleader coach in the football program, on the school web site and on business cards the school provided her."She was at all times held to similar responsibilities as those required by the NCAA," the lawsuit says. "She was never, however, provided any of the support and benefits provided to other coaches and their student teams."The lawsuit points out that Alabama replaced Greenwell with her assistant, David McDowell, a male about 20 years younger, citing that as "further evidence of the discriminatory action against her as a result of her age as well as her gender."The lawsuit also argues that Alabama has "wrongfully threatened (Greenwell) with criminal prosecution for some undefined financial offense."Deborah Lane, assistant vice president for university relations, said in an email that Alabama "has not been served with a copy of the lawsuit, so any comment at this time would be premature."
No sure if we will recover from this.
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