{"id":239669,"date":"2026-03-27T19:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T19:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/239669\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T19:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T19:37:10","slug":"male-athletes-file-title-ix-lawsuit-against-california-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/239669\/","title":{"rendered":"Male athletes file Title IX lawsuit against California college"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some of the wrestlers who\u00a0had their program cut<\/a> by a Southern California private college are using a counterintuitive tactic to try to save it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Thursday, three male wrestlers from California Baptist University, a private religious school in Riverside, filed a lawsuit<\/a> in the Central District of California against their own school. The lawsuit alleges that the school\u2019s decision earlier this year to shut down three athletic programs \u2014 wrestling, men\u2019s swimming and diving, and men\u2019s golf \u2014 violated Title IX.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCBU did not eliminate these teams because they were failing, because of money, or because of space. It eliminated them for one reason only: the sex of the students who participate in them,\u201d the athletes argue in the filing.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 2, the school announced it was cutting the programs<\/a>, saying the \u201cevolving\u201d college sports landscape forced the school\u2019s hand. \u201cIt has become clear that we cannot maintain our current programs and realize the university\u2019s goal of achieving greater competitive excellence that the new Division I era demands,\u201d the school\u2019s FAQ page<\/a> about the cuts read. On that same page, Cal Baptist\u2019s leadership said no amount of fundraising would lead it to change its mind.<\/p>\n

The FAQ\u00a0also included a question about why those three programs were cut out of the 19 varsity sports the school hosts. The school\u2019s answer: \u201cA number of factors were considered including community impact, Title IX, the House settlement, and available resources and facilities.\u201d The lawsuit was filed by two attorneys from the Pacific Legal Foundation, which declares it \u201cdefends Americans\u2019 liberties when threatened by government overreach and abuse.\u201d It specifically seizes on the school\u2019s mention of Title IX<\/a> in its explanation.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit alleges Cal Baptist\u2019s dropping these three sports would reduce the number of men\u2019s sports to be directly proportional to the Riverside school\u2019s enrollment. Department of Education data shows the school\u2019s overall enrollmen<\/a>t is\u00a0around 38% men compared with 62% women, but the lawsuit claims the athletic department had been at 46% male participation and 54% female. By cutting these three sports and their 69 athletes, the male athlete population will drop to 36%, the lawsuit says, and get the school in line with one of the three Title IX tests<\/a> that most colleges with athletics base their compliance<\/a> on.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit\u2019s main argument, however, is that the school is violating a different portion of Title IX<\/a> that calls on institutions to not interpret Title IX\u2019s code as a requirement to, in effect, balance the numbers. By cutting only three men\u2019s sports, the lawsuit alleges, the school is actually doing the exact sex-based discrimination that Title IX is intended to stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor too long, Title IX has been used as the reason universities drop programs,\u201d Nolan Kistler, a former Cal Baptist wrestler and a spokesperson for the \u201cKeep Cal Baptist Wrestling\u201d movement, said in an emailed statement supporting the lawsuit. \u201cSince the 1979 interpretation, wrestling programs have gone from around 150 to just 71. Instead of doing what Title IX was intended to do \u2014 expand opportunities, like adding women\u2019s wrestling, now one of the fastest-growing sports in college athletics \u2014 schools have too often thrown their hands up and used it as a shield to cut opportunities without ever pursuing real solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cal Baptist did not respond to SFGATE\u2019s request for comment about the lawsuit by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

But the vast majority of those cases have had some women\u2019s sports involved in the lawsuit. Lawsuits that focus solely on men\u2019s sports being cut have not fared<\/a> as well, even when arguing the exact point the lawyers representing the Cal Baptist lawyers are arguing.\u00a0While the lawsuit cites the school\u2019s decision to cut all three sports, the plaintiffs are only asking for the wrestling program to be reinstated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some of the wrestlers who\u00a0had their program cut by a Southern California private college are using a counterintuitive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,2008,2225],"class_list":{"0":"post-239669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-sfgla","12":"tag-sfgsports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}