PROVIDENCE — Brown University has agreed to reinstate the varsity women’s fencing and equestrian teams under a proposed settlement with female athletes who challenged the school’s move this spring to cut sports programs.

Brown and the legal team representing the women announced Thursday via separate statements that they had resolved the case involving a decades’ old joint settlement agreement to provide gender equity in sports.

If approved by U.S. District Court Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr., the settlement would set an August 2024 end date to a 1998 joint agreement in the landmark case Cohen v. Brown, which Brown officials faulted as becoming “a significant obstacle to the university’s ability to offer women’s and men’s teams the competitive experience athletes deserve and expect.”

The Cohen case has been credited with helping to even the playing field nationwide for men’s and women’s college sports at a time when laws governing gender discrimination were just taking shape.

Brown praised the deal reached Wednesday as one that will allow the Ivy League school to strengthen its sports competitiveness and improve recruiting and budgeting.

“This settlement, and the ability to move forward with the Excellence in Brown Athletics Initiative, positions us to see many more of these championship moments in the future,” Brown Athletics Director Jack Hayes said in a statement. “Brown can remain a national leader in providing equal opportunities to women and men, and compete with the best athletics programs around.”

The Cohen agreement, in place since the 1990s, requires that the share of varsity sports opportunities for women at Brown must be within a fixed percentage of the share of women in the undergraduate student body.

Brown announced plans in May to eliminate 11 varsity sports teams through the so-called Excellence in Brown Athletics Initiative. Men’s and women’s fencing, men’s and women’s golf, women’s skiing, men’s and women’s squash, women’s equestrian, men’s indoor track and field, men’s outdoor track and field and men’s cross country originally were going to take club status in an effort to streamline the sports programs.

The school reversed course on men’s track, field and cross-country, reinstating the programs.

The female athletes, through the state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union and Public Justice, challenged the cuts and asked the court to enforce the Cohen agreement, reinstate the women’s teams and find Brown in contempt for its “outrageous” conduct.

Under the settlement, Brown has agreed to reinstate its women’s varsity equestrian and fencing teams and not to reduce future financial support for the teams in comparison with men’s teams. Brown also agreed not to eliminate or reduce the status of any women’s varsity team or add any men’s team for at least the next four years.

“We are very pleased with the settlement,” Brown President Christina H. Paxson said in the news release. “From the outset of this initiative, Brown’s efforts have been about one thing — increasing opportunities for our student-athletes to be part of a competitive program. The Cohen agreement served an important purpose when it was signed 22 years ago, but Brown’s commitment to women athletes transcends the agreement. We can provide excellent athletics opportunities for women and men, be a leader in upholding Title IX and have a competitive varsity program. And we will.”

The ACLU praised the proposed settlement as a means to preserve gender equity for women athletes at Brown and ensure that Brown “adheres to its promise, made more than two decades ago, to comply with Title IX, the federal law that guarantees equal access to athletic programs for female athletes.”

“We are very pleased to report that we have convinced Brown that compliance with its obligations under Title IX and the 1998 agreement will result in the restoration of two of the varsity teams for women that it had slated for elimination,” Lynette Labinger, lead lawyer for the women, said in a statement.

“This is a bittersweet outcome. We are disappointed that we were unable to get all the women’s teams back,” Labinger said Thursday. She estimated that more than 30 of the approximately 70 class members will remain without their sport of choice.

“This is such a critical part of their lives that has been cut short,” she said.

Emails released in the course of discovery in the case revealed a desire by school officials to “kill this pestilential thing” in a way that wouldn’t rile up “the [Amy] Cohens of the world,” according to a legal filing by the ACLU and Public Justice.

According to Brown, evidence ultimately proved that Brown had been in “full compliance, often by a significant margin, with the joint agreement throughout President Paxson’s tenure.”

U.S. District Court Magistrate Patricia Sullivan served as mediator to the parties over the past week via teleconferencing.

“She was absolutely essential,” Labinger said.

kmulvane@providencejournal.com

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