Valley Bias Suit Over Girls’ Softball Expanded Citywide

The ACLU, already accusing Los Angeles of discriminating against a private girls’ softball league in the San Fernando Valley, announced Tuesday it is expanding its lawsuit to include all girls in the city, saying girls are routinely denied equal access to publicly run sports programs.

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys said a six-month investigation revealed the city offers girls fewer, smaller--and in some cases, no--softball teams at local Recreation and Parks Department facilities, in contrast with the city’s offerings for boys, who they said are aggressively recruited for numerous baseball teams.

“As a nation of children and their families daily watch in amazement at the feats of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa,” ACLU legal director Mark Rosenbaum said, “the city of Los Angeles discriminatorily organizes its athletic leagues and allots its public parks as if it were the special prerogative of boys to emulate these sluggers.”

The additional complaint will be included in the ACLU’s April lawsuit, which contended the city denied the West Valley Girls Softball League a permit for permanent facilities at city-run parks, while granting boys’ leagues in the same part of the Valley long-term leases at top-notch fields.

Steven L. Soboroff, president of the city’s Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners, said the latest complaint was based on nothing more than ACLU grandstanding.

“I think this is an opportunistic press conference on Mark McGwire’s day,” Soboroff said. “I think the ACLU finds this issue a high-visibility issue for themselves irrespective of the facts behind it.”

The ACLU’s earlier suit contended the permitting process sent the girls in the West Valley to four scrabbly fields at three sites, with no guarantee of being able to use the site from year to year. Parents, the ACLU said, brought their own chairs and refreshments.

In contrast, boys have for decades been given long-term permits to sites where they then spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing into pristine ball fields with electronic scoreboards, bleachers and concession stands that help fill out the budget, the ACLU said.

One of the big differences, the ACLU contends, is the boys’ leagues’ ability to keep a site from year to year, encouraging parents to invest in facilities they knew they could continue to use.

The ACLU’s Rocio Cordoba said the group recently rejected a settlement offer proposed by the city parks department, which would have sent the girls to a field at Hughes Middle School in Woodland Hills, in part because of the short-term nature of the lease.

In that arrangement, the girls would have been required to invest in costly improvements, share the fields with a soccer league--though that league had yet to accept the deal--and possibly forfeit their investment after five years, since the city only offered the lease for that period, Cordoba said. The boys, however, have had use of their city fields for decades in some cases.

The limitations placed on the girls are unacceptable, Cordoba said.

Soboroff said while he was not familiar with the specifics of the offer, he said the ACLU’s rejection of several offers is an example of the group’s unwillingness to settle the matter.

“It’s never good enough,” Soboroff said. “Our people . . . feel they’re dealing with a moving target, because this is such a sexy topic for the media the ACLU doesn’t want to give up on it. We’ve been trying hard.”

The ACLU’s most recent investigation compared participants and offerings at parks throughout the city. The advocacy group found thousands of boys participating in baseball while girls on softball teams totaled only a fraction of that number.

Citywide, 22,511 boys play recreation and parks-sponsored baseball, while only 1,905 girls play on city softball teams, according to the ACLU.

In the Valley, 6,948 boys are involved, compared with 540 girls on softball teams.

What the ACLU said it found, after further investigation, was that several neighborhood parks that aggressively recruit boys for baseball teams do not offer girls’ softball.

Instead, in places such as Shatto Park in the mid-Wilshire district, a banner with a phone number advertising boys’ baseball is balanced against an indoor bulletin board listing girls’ activities: country/western dance, modeling and cheerleading, the ACLU said.

“It’s not that the girls are not interested,” said Paula Pearlman of the California Women’s Law Center, which has joined the ACLU in the suit. “You can’t say, ‘Oh, they’re not applying, there’s no teams because there’s no interest.’ ”

“There are no teams because there is discrimination,” Pearlman said.

Soboroff disagrees. While he said the department has a marketing problem, he said that’s a far cry from discrimination.

Where there are no programs, it is because there is not the demand, he said. And the department takes responsibility for the lack of demand and is working hard to change it, he added.

“I want to create that demand,” Soboroff said. “The benefit that has come out of this is that we have found . . . we don’t merchandise the programs well.”

Lolita Pierce, a Mar Vista mother of a 9-year-old girl, said poor advertising is a big problem.

Pierce said she and her daughter, Heaven, tried unsuccessfully to find a softball team at Mar Vista Park in West Los Angeles. She said there were boys’ leagues announcements posted and that the two recalled seeing the adult leagues playing ball, but that they saw no evidence of a girls’ team.

“I think it’s very unfair,” Pierce said. “If there are programs that aren’t advertised that’s unfair too. Perhaps children don’t know what they’re interested in until the opportunities present themselves.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Baseball vs. Softball

The ACLU’s most recent investigation compared participants and offerings at parks throughout Los Angeles and found thousands of boys participating in baseball while girls on softball teams totaled only a fraction of that number.

Number of players

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Baseball Softball Valley 6,948 540 Citywide 22,511 1,905

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Source: City of Los Angeles