UPDATE: On March 10, 2018, Marina Goocher won her third collegiate national championship and seventh national title overall, defeating Kendal Davis of Colorado State University at the NCWA National Wrestling Championships in Texas.
Marina Goocher just wants an equal opportunity to wrestle in the National Collegiate Wrestling Association. The NCWA’s response: Build your own women’s team.
Goocher, a national champion college wrestler in her junior year, is a favorite to win another national championship in a few days. Yet she has been benched for the entire last three regular seasons in her wrestling league, the National Collegiate Wrestling Association (NCWA). Despite the male team at University of Michigan-Dearborn having abundant opportunities to train and attend NCWA competitions throughout the season, NCWA rules prohibit Marina from wrestling.
The problem: Not only are there no other women on Marina’s college team, there are also no other women wrestlers in the entire Midwest conference. The NCWA says women in Marina’s position can’t compete or practice with men on her team — even if it means she has to sit out the entire season.
All Marina wants is a chance on the mat. So she called on the ACLU and its partners for help. Along with the National Women’s Law Center and the Women’s Sports Foundation, the ACLU wrote a letter in October last year to the NCWA urging it “to change the rules of the college-level club wrestling association” so Goocher can compete against male wrestlers during the regular club wrestling season.
The letter explains that the NCWA deprives Marina of an equal opportunity to wrestle, which is both discriminatory and opens up NCWA member schools to liability. The NCWA’s response: too bad. It then NCWA accused Marina of laziness.
“It seems as though Ms. Goocher has been content to do nothing,” the NCWA wrote in November, “instead expecting the competition to come to her, and demanding other individuals do the hard work it takes to build a competitive clubs team program.”
The NCWA’s response to Marina deflects attention away from its mission as a national organization founded to create equitable opportunities for all of its wrestlers regardless of their gender. Instead, it blames one of its star athletes for her predicament. It is simply unfair to say women collegiate wrestlers bear the sole burden of ensuring women have equal opportunities as men in a wrestling association with such broad reach and resources.
And even if Marina could recruit, train, and develop a full women’s team at her university, who would this hypothetical women’s team compete against? There are no other women’s teams in their conference, and the NCWA rules prohibit them from wrestling male teams.
To be clear, Marina’s case is not about women wanting to wrestle men. It is about having an equal opportunity to compete against the competition available to you. None of the opportunities the NCWA puts forth as alternatives for Marina is actually equivalent.
For example, the NCWA listed nine events which Marina could have chosen to attend. None of them are NCWA competitions. Rather they are open competitions where anyone can attend regardless of age or ability. Marina, remember, is a national champion.
Furthermore, only two of the open tournaments are located in Michigan and the remaining tournaments would require her to travel as far as Minnesota, South Dakota, or Wisconsin. Essentially, if Marina were forced to pursue these alternative “opportunities,” as the NCWA puts it, she would have to expend exponentially more resources and time than her male teammates to travel across the country every weekend. This is not exactly the definition of equal.
The NCWA has even gone so far as to criticize Marina for choosing to attend UM-Dearborn instead of other institutions that may have larger women’s teams. Again, the NCWA can’t wiggle out of its obligation to provide equal opportunities to both men and women by putting the onus on individual students to attend schools that have women’s teams. Marina had plenty of reasons to attend U-M Dearborn, like its engineering program, and the NCWA should ensure that female athletes have equal opportunities to wrestle no matter where they choose to attend college.
As the ACLU, WSF, and NWLC have explained in response, Marina’s objective is to ensure that women and men have equal time on the mat until the sport of wrestling recruits and engages more women. But until there are enough women’s teams to create equal opportunities for women wrestlers, Marina, and women like her, must be given a chance to compete against men for a spot on the school wrestling team and compete in matches against men during the regular season. Anything less is discriminatory and wrong.
You can stand up for Marina and the rights of all women athletes by telling the NCWA to change its discriminatory policies. in telling the NCWA to update its antiquated, gendered rules and stop denying Marina Goocher her right to compete in wrestling this season.
Learn More About the Issues on This Page
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Press ReleaseOct 2024
LGBTQ Rights
+2 Issues
At Supreme Court, Tennessee Seeks to Expand Reach of Dobbs to Ban Health Care for Transgender YouthAt Supreme Court, Tennessee Seeks to Expand Reach of Dobbs to Ban Health Care for Transgender Youth
WASHINGTON – In their brief defending the state’s ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has asked the Supreme Court to expand its ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and allow the state to target transgender people’s autonomy over their own bodies, too. In U.S. v. Skrmetti, three Tennessee transgender youth and their families are challenging a state law that prohibits medical providers from prescribing medical treatments to transgender youth, such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapies, that are allowed for minors who are not transgender. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, the families argue that the ban violates their Equal Protection rights under the 14th Amendment. In the brief filed today, Tennessee relies on the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Whole Women’s Health in an attempt to justify its ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender people. The brief cites to Dobbs at least 10 times in sweeping arguments to justify government sex discrimination. “We’ve seen just how far extreme politicians will push to deny us our reproductive freedom, from banning abortion to threatening IVF to even threatening to put doctors in jail for providing emergency care, with deadly consequences for women’s lives,” said Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “The same politicians who are trying to control women have now set their sights on transgender people and their families and are trying to control their bodies and lives. Allowing politicians to continue down this road could hold severe implications for the freedom of all people to decide what is right for their own body.” Tennessee claims that their ban on gender-affirming care does not discriminate on the basis of sex even though it bans minors of one sex from accessing health care it allows to members of another sex. A transgender girl is barred from taking doctor-prescribed estrogen because Tennessee considers it “inconsistent” with her birth-assigned sex of male but a cisgender girl with a birth-assigned sex of female is permitted to take estrogen for any purpose including to affirm her female gender identity. “Since this Project’s founding by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we have adamantly challenged efforts to limit who we can be based on our gender or ability to bear children,” said Ria Tabacco Mar, director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. “Tennessee’s attempt to limit who young people can become based on their sex shares a through-line with our nation’s history of subjugating women in the name of biology. The fight for each of us to live fully and authentically must include trans people. There is no ‘transgender’ exception to the U.S. Constitution.” In April 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP sued the state of Tennessee to block S.B. 1, which prohibits medical providers from prescribing medical treatments to transgender youth, such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapies, that it exempts for minors who are not transgender. Following a decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, S.B. 1 took effect in July 2023. Since 2021, 24 states have banned hormone therapies for transgender youth. “Laws like Tennessee’s are not benign regulations of medical care; they are discriminatory efforts to exclude transgender people from the protections of the Constitution,” said Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “These bans represent a dangerous and discriminatory affront to the well-being of transgender youth across the country and their constitutional right to equal protection under the law.” -
Press ReleaseSep 2024
Women's Rights
Civil Rights Groups Tell Federal Appeals Court that Protections for Pregnant Workers Cover Abortion CareCivil Rights Groups Tell Federal Appeals Court that Protections for Pregnant Workers Cover Abortion Care
WASHINGTON, D.C. - On Friday, a broad coalition of labor, workers’ rights, and gender justice organizations — led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU of Arkansas, and the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) — filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in support of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) regulations implementing the landmark Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), including the regulations’ explicit protection for workers who have abortions. The PWFA, which took effect last year, was the culmination of a decade-long campaign to secure access to reasonable accommodations for workers with temporary limitations caused by “pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions.” The EEOC’s regulations provide comprehensive guidance to workers, employers, and the courts about the statute’s range of protections, including job-protected time off for medical treatment and recovery. The amicus brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit supports the EEOC in a challenge by 17 red states that are trying to block the PWFA regulations’ coverage of accommodations for abortion-related care. In June, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas dismissed the states’ challenge, and the states appealed to the Eighth Circuit. Their appeal includes a request that the Eighth Circuit issue a preliminary injunction of the regulations’ abortion provisions. The ACLU-NWLC brief details the federal law’s longstanding ban on discrimination against workers who obtain abortions – protection the PWFA intended to continue. The brief also documents the accounts of workers whose health and jobs were put at risk when their employers denied them accommodations, including time off, for abortion care. Such accounts illustrate the urgent need for clarity with respect to the PWFA’s coverage of abortion-related accommodations, and the devastating medical and financial consequences if such accommodations are denied. “Abortion has long been recognized as part of the full spectrum of workers’ pregnancy-related needs that are protected by the law, ” said Gillian Thomas, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s Women's Rights Project. “The states’ challenge has created uncertainty, and seeks to deprive workers of essential, job-protected time off for abortion care, posing significant health risks and leading to forced pregnancies. The EEOC regulations are vital to ensure pregnant workers don't have to choose between their health and their jobs.” “Extremist politicians are demonstrating repeatedly their willingness to risk women’s health to advance their anti-abortion agenda,” said Gaylynn Burroughs, vice president for Education and Workplace Justice at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). “Let’s be clear: abortion care is pregnancy-related care, and stripping essential protections for abortion from the PWFA would endanger the health and economic security of pregnant workers.” “The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and its regulations provide a lifeline for workers who need accommodations during the most critical periods of their lives. Attempting to strip away these protections, particularly for abortion-related needs, is an affront to the rights and well-being of pregnant workers,” said John Williams, legal director of the ACLU of Arkansas. “All people in all aspects of pregnancy, including abortion, should be treated with the care and consideration they deserve. We stand firmly with the EEOC in defending these essential protections.” A copy of the brief can be found here. -
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Women's Rights
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Press ReleaseJul 2024
Women's Rights
LGBTQ Rights
ACLU Condemns House Measure Against Department of Education Title IX RuleACLU Condemns House Measure Against Department of Education Title IX Rule
WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass H.J. Res. 165, a Congressional Review Act resolution disapproving of the U.S. Department of Education’s final Title IX rule providing guidance to schools on protecting students from sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, anti-LGBTQ discrimination, and other forms of sex discrimination. Mike Zamore, ACLU National Policy and Government Affairs Director, had the following response: “Today’s vote to completely repeal the Title IX rule takes a sledgehammer to the government’s ability to ensure that all students have the opportunity to learn free from sex discrimination and harassment. Stripping critical civil rights protections from LGBTQ students and students who are pregnant and parenting - as this resolution would do - is something that all members of Congress should strongly oppose. This is also not how Congress should act to protect the rights of students who face disciplinary action under Title IX because passing this resolution would prevent future rulemaking to ensure fair processes in school disciplinary proceedings.” The ACLU’s letter urging a “No” vote on H.J. Res. 165 can be found here: /documents/aclu-urges-no-vote-on-h-j-res-165 The ACLU’s statement on the final Title IX rule can be found here: /press-releases/155090