Cal State Fullerton Needs a Basic Lesson : * $1.35-Million Warning to Administrators: Firings Should Be for Just Cause

Cal State Fullerton administrators are apparently the ones who need to learn a lesson, judging by a jury’s verdict that Jim Huffman was wrongly fired as the women’s volleyball coach after filing a sex discrimination case against the school.

A Superior Court jury this month awarded Huffman $1.35 million in damages. Punitive damages will be decided later, and will be kept private. The verdict or the award could be overturned, or damages lessened, on appeal. But that will not erase the jury’s finding that the university’s explanation for firing Huffman was inadequate. It is easy to see why.

Huffman coached the women’s volleyball team to a woeful record of 25 wins and 80 losses over three years. In January of 1992, Cal State Fullerton announced it was dropping the sport. Soon after, Huffman and others filed suit against the university, contending it was violating state laws by discriminating against women.

On March 20, 1992, a Superior Court judge ordered the university to reinstate the program. That was a Friday. The following Monday, the school fired Huffman.

As part of a precedent-setting settlement of the bias lawsuit, Cal State Fullerton agreed to reinstate the women’s volleyball team, add a women’s soccer team and equalize spending on men’s and women’s sports within 10 years.

While Cal State Fullerton appears to be getting the message about sex equity, it must now get the message about unfairly firing someone because he filed a lawsuit.

The university contended Huffman’s record as coach justified his firing. But Huffman supporters disagreed, as did the jury. Several knowledgeable witnesses testified that the Cal State Fullerton women’s volleyball team made substantial progress under Huffman. One witness said that on the Friday before the firing, the vice president for academic affairs said the school had to “get rid of” Huffman because he had caused the university enough aggravation.

One juror said the university produced no “paper trail” to support its claim it wanted to fire Huffman several months earlier, but decided to let him and women’s volleyball leave the campus at the same time to let him get a job elsewhere without having the blot of firing on his record. The timing, and lack of documentation, made it seem like retaliation.

The university can ill-afford such legal findings. It must be sure that future terminations are for just cause and that its actions leading up to the firing will lead impartial observers to agree.