Lack of Experience Sinks Case for Wanna-Be Female Football Coach

Darrell VanDeusen
Darrell VanDeusen
04/21/2016

How can you get experience for a job if you can’t get a job to get you the experience? That was at least a part the problem for Sue Ann Easterling, according to a federal court judge in Louisiana last week.   Easterling applied for a job as a high school head football coach in Tensas Parish.  When she was not selected for the job she sued the School Board, alleging sex discrimination and retaliation because she was perceived as a litigious person.  Easterling v. Tensas Parish Sch. Bd., 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 49862 (W.D. La. Apr. 13, 2016).

Easterling, you see, had sued other local school boards for their hiring decisions, and she claimed she was being blackballed.  She obtained a settlement at one school and has another lawsuit pending against a different school, alleging discrimination.  In the case against Tensas Parish, she claimed that she was not hired because a hiring official made the assumption that – because she was a woman – she had no football coaching experience.  This, said Easterling, was evidence of sex discrimination.

The court found Easterling’s assertion to be a misrepresentation of the facts, since the hiring official knew outright that there were no women high school football coaches anywhere in Louisiana at the time she sought the position.  That, said the court, was “an objective statistic, not a gender stereotype or any kind of discriminatory animus.”

According to the court decision, Easterling a Bachelor’s degree in physical education and a Master’s in secondary education, with a concentration in athletic administration and coaching. She is state certified to teach physical education and has coached high-school aged athletes more than 10 years.  But she’s never coached a school-sponsored football team.  Even with these credentials, she was not able to get a job with Tensas.

The biggest rejection at issue in the case came about in 2011, when Easterling applied for, but was not interviewed for, the head football coach/athletic director job.   A successful football coach at a nearby parish applied too, but he then withdrew his application. Tensas hired a man who had previously been its interim head football coach.

Apropos of nothing (perhaps), Tensas Panthers football was not a Louisiana powerhouse at the time.  The team went 0-10 in 2011, and had won only seven games over the past five seasons with 14 consecutive regular-season games lost.   So, there was a desire to… win?

The court found that Tensas had legitimate non-discriminatory reasons for making the decisions that it did.  Easterling’s argument that the hiring official’s comment that about “having someone else in mind” for the job was true, because Tensas was considering the successful coach from a neighboring Parish when Easterling first applied.   While Easterling argued that the other applicant would have cost Tensas more money, the court said Tensas’s willingness to spend more to hire an accomplished coach was reasonable.   When that coach withdrew his application, hiring the previous interim coach was logical and not discriminatory.  Her lack of any high-school football coaching experience sunk her chances.

One does wonder, however:  if there are no female high-school football coaches in Louisiana, how does one get the experience necessary to get the job.  That, however, is a question to be answered on another day.

 

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