Our Episode Transcripts are produced by Descript. Some words/dialogue may not be transcribed with 100% accuracy.
Ellie: [00:00:00] In this episode of Law Talks, I’m joined by Rich Nichols, who represented Hope Solo in her claim against the US Soccer Federation for violation of the Equal Pay Act and Title VII wage discrimination.
Rich details his extensive career in sports law and discusses his recent book ‘All Things Being Equal: The Genesis, Costs, and Aftermath of the USWNT’s Equal Pay Battle’, The book provides detailed strategies for those wishing to achieve equal pay into their sectors.
Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed on Law Talks. And to start us off, please could you tell us about your career pathway working in the legal sector?
Rich Nichols: My career pathway? Well, I started out not really wanting to be a lawyer. I wanted to be an educator. I wanted to be a superintendent of schools or the president of university.
And as I went through graduate school at Stanford, I realized that most decisions about education are being made by lawyers and judges here in the United States. So I decided to go to law school [00:01:00] and never really wanted to practice law, to be honest. But after you go to law school and you go through that grind, you feel an obligation to yourself, to uh, to practice law.
So, you know, sports. I was an athlete. I was on the U. S. national track team a couple of times, not the Olympic team, but the national team a couple of times. So sports was my thing, so I decided that I would pursue sports as a lawyer. And back then, this is in the early 80s, there was really no such thing as sports law.
It was lawyers doing business as lawyers in the business of sports, is really what it was. There is now a sports law. The sports industry, obviously, is huge. And there are lawyers who do nothing but sports law, and they call themselves sports lawyers. So I guess just by evolution, I'm a sports lawyer. Yeah.
So that, that's pretty much how I ended up doing what I'm doing.
Ellie: Thank you. That's yeah, that's really interesting. I know that in the US also, it tends to take longer at university [00:02:00] studying law, cause you do a previous undergrad and then move on. So exactly. Yeah. And, and can I ask so as soon as, I think you kind of touched on it, but as soon as you moved from.
Yeah. University, were you able to kind of take on sport cases quite a way? I think in the UK, it tends to take a little bit longer to get into, into kind of the sports area of things. It tends to be more general practice.
Rich Nichols: Well, you know, what I did was instead of going right into the law, I started my own sports marketing company.
This was back in 1985. And when, like I said, when sports and sports marketing was really just beginning, just evolving. So I figured the best way to get involved in the sports business is to start one. So I had a sports marketing firm where we spent 80 percent of our time managing corporations that wanted to use sports to promote their products and services.
And 20 percent of our time representing a very finite elite group of of professional athletes. So my clients back then were in [00:03:00] the in the NFL, James Lofton, who went on to become a wide, a Hall of Fame wide receiver in the NFL. Edwin Moses, Olympic champion, the 400 meter hurdles also represented a couple of Famous boxers, Henry Tillman, who won the gold medal in the Olympics in 1984 for the United States, being the only person at the time to to defeat Mike Tyson, keep Mike Tyson off of the Olympic team in 1984.
So that's when, that's when my representation of athletes kind of began. And that's when my, my business of sports began also with sports marketing.
Ellie: Interesting. Some very high profile. Profile names there very early on. So to give like some context about the podcast, the majority of our listeners are law students or even at secondary school, high school, but aspiring, aspiring lawyers.
So just kind of start off with, before we move to your book, I'd love to discuss some of like the high profile cases you previously worked on. So kind of on the sports store. Yeah. If you want to just take it away.
Rich Nichols: [00:04:00] So, so I represented Marion Jones in the, in the infamous or famous Belco steroid scandal back in the early two thousands.
And the way I came to represent Marion was that I actually was, became her general counsel three years before the Belco steroid scandal began. And the way I got that opportunity was that I knew her agent. Her agent was a, a, a runner in track and I've known him for years and he came to a sports lawyers association conference in 1998 and I knew who Marion Jones was at that time in 1998.
I think she just won her first. World uh, championship and you know, I followed track and field, obviously, so I knew who she was and he asked me if I'd be interested in, in being her lawyer and helping him negotiate and finalise her endorsement deals going into the 2000 Olympic Games. So, of course, I said, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. I'll do that. [00:05:00] And at the time I was a. I was a venture capital technology lawyer in Silicon Valley, doing, doing high tech venture capital transactions. So, taking on Marion Jones and doing, doing her sponsorship deals going into the 2000 Olympic Games, given my previous sports law experience was It was almost like fun.
I could do those deals in my sleep. So I did that. I did that in the year 1999 and 2000. I had never met her. I had never talked with her. I just talked with her agent. He would, he would solicit the potential sponsorship endorsement deal for her. He would negotiate the first part of it. Then he would say, Oh, I've got to turn it over to legal.
Then I get it. And I, I, I finalize the negotiation, get the deal done, draft the draft, the contract, get it signed. And then the rest would be, would be history. So I didn't, I didn't actually meet Marion until December of 2000. This was four or five months after she won five medals at the Olympic games in Sydney, three [00:06:00] gold and two bronze.
She, she knew that I was her lawyer and that I was doing her deals for her. So she called me one day and And said, Hey, look, you know, we've never met. We've never talked. I want to meet you. I'm going to get an SP award from ESPN in February in Las Vegas. I'm going to invite you as my guest and we'll meet at that time.
So that's when I first met her. I met her in, in February of 2001 at the SPS. And, and we hit it off and became fast, fast friends and, and she was a great client and a good person and we really worked well together. And the key to that, the key to that relationship was. As I told all the athletes that I've ever worked with famous as they were, I told them, I said, look, I told her, you know, I was, I was a world class track athlete myself.
I've doubled a lot of professional athletes, so I'm not in awe of you or anybody else. And I'm going to give you the best advice I can, I'm going to give you the pros and cons of any situation as a lawyer would do, and you're going to make your [00:07:00] decisions. I'm not making your decisions for you. You're going to make the decisions, because then you're going to be accountable.
And she was all for that she said that's exactly how I want to work, and we were off to the races. Marion's a very, very smart woman, very strong. She's probably the toughest. Mentally toughest person I've ever met in my life to this day. And we, we hadn't continued to have a great, a great relationship. I kind of con consider Marian to be almost like my daughter at this point.
So that's, that's how I, I started with, with Marian. And then in, in 2003, in July of 2003, I actually picked my family up from California. We moved here to Texas. Because Marion's here in Dallas, in Texas. Her agent was here in Dallas. We figured we'd be closer, and it was a great opportunity at the time.
And within three months of moving here, we moved here in July of 2003. And in September of 2003 is when the BALCO steroid scandal began. And [00:08:00] that changed everything. I had to go from being like a business affairs, general counsel, business lawyer, to putting on my white collar criminal lawyer hat. And going out and, and, and and bringing on a, a team of white collar expert lawyers, because I knew right away it was going to be a battle, a battle supreme with, with the government over the issue of performance enhancing drugs.
So that's how, that's how it all began. And it was a very, the Belco situation was a very high profile, stressful mission, critical. career on the line for Marion situation. And if you recall, this started in 2003, November of 2003, Olympic Games were in Athens in, in the summer of 2004. Our goal was to get Marion to the Olympic Games in 2004 [00:09:00] without being charged with a crime and without being charged with a doping violation.
And we knew that was going to be a tall task. And it was very stressful, but we got it done. We satisfied our goals. She got to the Olympic Games in 2004 without being charged with anything. And unfortunately at the Olympic Games even though she won the long jump at the Olympic trials here in the United States that year with the longest jump in the world that year, she only came in fifth in the long jump at the Olympics.
And she did not make the team in the, in the 100 meters that year, but she was on the four by 100 meter relay team. And unfortunately, in the finals, the night before in the semifinals, that team tied the world record, but unfortunately in the finals. Lauren Williams, who was the second runner of the four.
Marion was the third. Lauren ran through the zone, didn't get the baton to Marion before, before the zone was up and they were disqualified for an illegal pass of the baton. So [00:10:00] Marion left the Olympic games in 2004 with zero medals. So it was a bitter pill to, to swallow after getting her to the games.
And then she came away, you know, empty handed. Yeah, I can imagine. All the legal stress, first of all, and then the actual sports performance coming after that. Yeah, it was, I mean, it's a testament to Marion's mental and physical strength. Actually, actually made it through all of the stress. that the Belco case put on her in the latter half of 2003 and the first half of 2004.
It was a miracle that she trained, had to deal with the lawyers and what we needed from her, had to deal with the fight with the government we were having. And she had to perform at the Olympic trials and she made the team. So that's it's a testament to her physical and her mental strength. That she, that she made the team actually.
Ellie: Yeah, absolutely. I, I [00:11:00] have some like personal interest in it and have done some research and kind of doping laws around the Olympics and things and how stringent they are. And I suppose like a word to describe would be that quite unforgiving. And things like that. So yeah, really interesting to hear about the, the kind of legal battle before the Olympics.
Rich Nichols: Right. It was tough. Yeah, it was tough.
Ellie: Thank you very much. And if you're happy to now focus on. The kind of main topic of the interview, so your book, All Things Being Equal. And to start us off with could you describe what it was like representing Hope Solo in the case where she was the first to sue the USSR for violation of the Equal Pay Act?
So, so the story of the U. S. women's national soccer team's quest for equal pay began, begins with Hope Solo and her phone call to me in December of 2012 while the team was in the midst of negotiating their collective bargaining agreement with U. S. soccer and they were being represented by the lawyer that had [00:12:00] represented the team for 14 years.
He was like a father figure to them and he also had developed a rather chummy relationship with The president of US soccer over all those years. So the team and hope felt like maybe they maybe he wasn't advocating for them as strongly as he should have, because he had a friendly relationship with with US soccer.
So there was some salary demands that the team wanted the lawyer to take back to us soccer during this negotiation, and he kind of didn't. Like what they were demanding, and he was pushing back on the team a little bit. So hope didn't take very kindly to that. And hope is a very tough, smart woman. And she asked her financial advisor if he knew of a lawyer who was smart and tough and who could fight and Who could maybe [00:13:00] come in and take over and get them the salary that they wanted.
So he recommended me and she said, well, can you call him? He did. He called me. And he said, Hey, rich, you know, I I represent hope solo and, and you know, they're in the midst of negotiating their salary and their CB collective bargaining agreement with us soccer. They're not happy with their current counsel.
And she asked me to identify a lawyer who was tough and strong, who'd be, who might be willing to fight for them. So I told her about you. Are you interested? So I said, sure. He said, well, are you willing to take a call with her? I said, yeah, absolutely. He said, okay, well, good. Cause I've got her on the line.
So he patched her in. She was on, she was on hold on the line. So here I am talking to Hope Solo. I'd never met her. My only introduction to Hope was that I saw her on in 2008 on Piers Morgan's show here in the United States on CNN, and he interviewed her. And this was in 2008 after she had a, [00:14:00] she'd had a riff with her coach, Greg Ryan.
Who pulled her out of a World Cup game and put in Brianna Scurry, and they ended up losing the game four to nothing and hope basically told the world that if I had been in goal, we wouldn't have lost so that was very controversial. So I remember watching her in that interview with Piers Morgan and I remember thinking, wow, that's a tough woman, a little rough around the edges.
But she's the kind of person that I'd want my foxhole. If I was having a fight. So here I am on the phone with her, and I didn't know what to expect. And I hear this very soft voice talking to me and I'm thinking, is this really Hope Solo? She said, yes, it is. And she explained the situation they would have in their negotiation and wanted to know if I'd be interested maybe in, in in taking the place of that lawyer and, you know, I said, I'm interested.
So I ended up having a call the next day with the entire team and hope. And then the day after that, I flew to Boca Raton, [00:15:00] Florida, where they were training. And at the time I had a law partner with me who was also interested in it. And we gave a presentation to the team that day. And we left and they took a vote as to whether or not they were going to fire their then lawyer and hire me at that time us.
And they took the vote and the vote was nine to nine to keep their current lawyer. So hope called me. She was very disappointed, you know, and she said, we're going to take another vote and I'll call you tomorrow morning. So she called me the next morning. It took another vote. It was 10 to eight to keep their current lawyer.
So I said, Hey, look, don't worry about it. It's fine. It's probably best that you stick with your lawyer at this stage of the game because you're halfway through. But if you ever need anything, just call me. She said, okay, great. So 13 months went by. So that call was in December of 2012. In January of 2014, 13 months later, out of the blue, I get a call from Hope, and she tells me, Hey, look, you know, we signed last year when I was talking with you, we negotiated an [00:16:00] incomplete memorandum of understanding.
It was not a complete collective bargaining agreement. They kind of rushed us through it because they wanted us to sign it. The US Soccer Federation had started a new professional league called the NWSL, the National Women's Soccer League. All the teams, all the players on the national team were being assigned to the 10 teams in the NWSL.
The NWSL was starting to play on April 1st, so we had to have some kind of an agreement signed with US Soccer by April one. So we signed this MOU on March 19th, 2013, and we now know that it was the wrong thing to do. The terms were incomplete. The terms were terrible. U. S. Soccer, they're still screwing us.
We want to meet with you again. So I met with them again, shortly after, the day after that call, I met with them here in Dallas. And they told me that, look, we want to bring you on. I said, okay, fine. You know, just let me know when. I'll send you an agreement. Whole nine yards. So I sent [00:17:00] them a contract. And months went by five or six months went by.
So then in June of that year, Oh, call me. She's all apologetic. You know, the team that kind of dragged their feet with making these decisions. It's a hard decision. I said, Hey, I understand. Then July came. Oh, Abby Wambach and Christie Rampone, the two captains of the team want to have another call with you.
Okay, great. I ended up having a call with Abby Wambach only in mid July. And she decided she liked me. They said they were gonna sign me up. So August went by. Then I get a call early September from Hope. The team wants to meet with you again in Rochester, New York. Can you do that? I said, sure. So on September 18th, 2014, I met with the team in Rochester, New York, and they voted that day to bring me on.
Mm-Hmm, . And I would start representing them officially in January of 2015. So that's how I ended up working with the team. And I told them when I met with them last, I said, look, you guys are [00:18:00] professional athletes. And you have a very finite career. You have a very short window of time where you can make money perfecting your craft as business people.
This is a business. And right now, with this MOU, you have no marketing rights, you have no group licensing rights, and you have no way of being able to sign individual endorsement deals for your individual selves without U. S. SACA saying it's okay. That is a bunch of crap. You guys need to think about it and figure out what you want to do.
If you want to be independent, if you want to have your own revenue streams, you know, I'm your guy, I can represent you and get that done. And if equal pay is also something you're interested in, we can push forward and look at that as being the primary item in our next collective bargaining negotiation.
So they, they heard it, they liked it. So I started in January of 2015, immediately pushing back on all of the inequities. That U. S. Soccer had had summarily [00:19:00] pushed on the women since basically 1999. And since since you playing for the U. S. team was their only source of income. U. S. Soccer took advantage of that.
With women, they could leverage that by saying, Hey, or intimating if you don't do if you don't do what we say do, you're not gonna be on the team. You're not gonna have a job. You're not gonna be making any money. So my goal in 2015 before the World Cup in 2015 was to make us soccer understand that there was a new sheriff in town.
We were not going to do anything that we being the team, these women on the U. S. national team, World Cup champions, Olympic champions, we're not doing anything for free anymore. And I knew that was going to be a new paradigm for U. S. soccer, because they were used to pushing the team into doing these deals and getting no money.
Zero. Unbelievable. How could they do that? Because they could say, well, intimate that if you don't [00:20:00] do it. You're going to get cut from the team and you're not gonna be making any money. You're not gonna be on the team making no money. So the ultimate leverage. So I began pushing back on all these ridiculous endorsement deals at us soccer was pushing forward where the women would get no money.
I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I said, wait a minute, this team, they're world cup champions. The men's team. They barely qualify for the World Cup and don't qualify for the Olympics, and they're getting all these endorsement deals, making all this money, and then you want to drag the women and make them a part of the same deal and pay us nothing?
That's not going to happen. It was the first time that anyone had really pushed back on U. S. soccer and said no on behalf of the women. No, it's not going to happen. The first deal was an EA Sports deal. FIFA 2016, EA Sports, the video game. The men had a deal from 2012 to 2015. For 120, [00:21:00] 000 a year, 480, 000 over four years, the men had this FIFA 2012 game.
EA Sports wanted to renew the deal for 2016 to 2018. I mean, 2015 to 2017. And they wanted the women's team involved. I said, hey, great! US taxes, but so how much are we going to get? How much of the women, how much does the women's team going to get paid for participating in this fee for 2016? Video game. Oh, nothing.
No money for the women. What do you mean? No money for the women? Oh, no, this is a great Awareness and marketing opportunity for the u. s. Women's national team Then you know there's gonna be a female player on the team on the cover of the video game And you know, the women's team is gonna be featured in the game So this is great marketing and awareness opportunity for the u.
s. Women's team. I said, no, no, no, no We don't need marketing. We don't need awareness. We're the World Cup [00:22:00] champions, twice over. We're probably going to win the World Cup this July in 2015. We're Olympic champions. Everybody knows who the U. S. Women's National Soccer Team is. So we don't need awareness opportunities.
We need some money. So they said, well, you know, we've already negotiated the deal and you're in it. I said, we're not in it. Unless we get paid. We don't have to do it. Oh, but we signed the contract. I said, you signed the contract. US soccer signed the contract. We didn't sign anything. You made a commitment that you can't keep to your sponsor.
So figure it out. So they finally came back to us and hat in hand and basically said, well, you know, we apologize for not including the team, the women's team in this negotiation, but we really need to do this. We can offer you, we can offer the team 20, 000. So I took it back to the team and I said, look, It's 20, 000 more than you were going to get and but but more importantly, U.S. Soccer has gotten the message [00:23:00] the days of not paying the U. S. Women's National Soccer team for endorsement opportunities with sponsors for U. S. Soccer are over from this day forward, you get paid or you're not doing the deal. So we took the 20, 000 and we were kind of off to the races, but that did not keep U.S. Soccer from coming back at us. Between February of 2015 and June, the start of the World Cup with three or four more deals where the women were going to get paid either nothing or next to nothing. And we turned them all down. No way. So they went forward. They won the World Cup in July, early July of 2015.
And that was the greatest thing that could happen because the team now had leverage. In addition to the pushing back. On U. S. Soccer telling them we're not doing any more deals for free that pushback from January 2015 to June of [00:24:00] 2015, plus winning the World Cup in July of 2015. We now have leverage to demand equal pay in the next collective bargaining negotiation, which was going to take place in 2016.
So that's, that's, that's how it all came about. You know, it's all about winning. It's all about being able to say no. Winning, creating leverage, then making your demand. It's not an ask. We're not asking you for anything. We're demanding it. We're demanding equal pay. So, after they won the World Cup in July of 2015, I called the President of U.S. Soccer and I said, Hey, look, you know because of this crummy MOU, The team entered into in 2013, there's no way for the team to, 'cause there are no marketing rights. Mm-Hmm , no group licensing rights, no individual endorsement rights. Nobody on this team can make any money. No one on this team can [00:25:00] leverage their World Cup victory for money and endorsement deals.
What we would like to do is we would like to accelerate the negotiation of the next collective bargaining agreement. This MOU doesn't expire until December of 2016. It's now August 2015. We want to negotiate a new deal so that terms can be in place for the team to leverage their 2015 World Cup victory and hopefully the 2016 Olympic victory into money for the team and the players.
And the president agreed to begin negotiations earlier than August. Usually also, I thought at that time that was August of 2015. Well, he dragged his feet and we didn't have our first meeting preliminary negotiation meeting for the new collective bargaining agreement process until November 30th of that year, which was disappointing, but it told me what we were going to be facing.
US soccer was going to fight this tooth and nail. And [00:26:00] we sent them our proposal. We spent the month of December, 2015. We'd be in the team putting together the CBA proposal. And we sent the CBA proposal to US soccer on January 4th of 2016. And that started the very serious process of fighting for equal pay.
Equal pay was the critical most important term in our proposal, and it was the linchpin for what was to come next.
Ellie: Thank you. I think that I mean, hearing the extent to which the kind of proactive demand you have to make just to ensure that world champions get paid, I think highlights how important these these cases were.
And thank you so much. But kind of focusing on from that. I think it's really, really clear the kind of inspiration in the lawsuit and why you'd want to be involved. What then further inspired you to write the book about your experience?
Rich Nichols: Yeah, it's, the experience was, it was, it was life altering, a life altering [00:27:00] experience.
It was very eye opening with regard to the, the, the, the inequities and the inequality for women in sports. I mean, I knew it because I worked. I've always worked with women in sports and I knew it, but you know, until you actually get to see it up close and personal, it being the people representing the U.S. Soccer Federation, sitting across from them at a negotiation table, and them basically telling you that the women on your team are not worth getting paid the same as the men, you know, until you hear it, it's almost not real. But I heard it, felt it, saw it, so did the team, and it just made us more determined to, to fight, but it became a real fight.
And as I talk about in the book, we had, we had tactics and strategies. And and the tactics, tactics and strategies that women in the workplace, [00:28:00] I believe, can absorb and use going forward in their battles for equal pay. And, you know, there are basically five tactics. You gotta have leverage. You've got to have nuclear bombs that you can drop during a negotiation to keep your leverage or to make your point.
You have to have commitment to the objective of equal pay. You have to have commitment to it. You have to have guts. You really have to be gutsy and take some risks that may create pain to get what you want. And then you have to execute your plan. And those are the five tactics that I deploy. For the team to get equal pay.
The first nuclear bomb we dropped was after the third negotiation session in 2016, March of 2016, when it [00:29:00] was clear that was no, there was no way that the US Soccer Federation was going to agree to equal pay. The first bomb we had to drop was to do something that had never been done before. And that was to sue.
The U. S. Soccer Federation at the at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission here in the United States to sue them for violation of the Equal Pay Act and violation of Title VII wage discrimination. This had never been done before by any women in the workplace and certainly never done before by professional female professional athletes against to sue their current employers for wage discrimination and violation of Equal Pay Act.
Huge deal, huge claim and complaint to file. And we did it. It was tough. The team, the team had the guts and the commitment to equal pay to do it. It basically lit this case up. This case. [00:30:00] And their push for equal pay became world renowned. At that time, we instituted a grandiose strategic communications plan, and we went everywhere.
Everyone in the world knew that the U. S. Women's National Soccer team was going after equal pay, and they were committed to it because they were suing their current employer, U. S. Soccer Federation, for equal pay. So that was huge. But once we did that, U. S. Soccer really knew we were serious, so they turned up the heat too.
They turned up there even before we did that. They sued us in federal court on the afternoon of our first day of negotiations in February of 2016. They sued us in federal court to strip us to strip the team of the only economic. Weapon that you have in a collective bargaining situation. That's the right to strike and boycott.
They sued to keep us from being able to do that. Then we filed the EOC complaints. Then they surreptitiously brought [00:31:00] in the most powerful. Management consulting firm in the world, McKinsey and Company, to infiltrate the Players Association, to try to dismantle their quest for equal pay, to try to disrupt their commitment.
To the objective of equal pay and to try to dismantle the union and get rid of me. So that was going on. So there was, and then, of course, the team is training and playing and looking at looking for the Olympic Games in August of 2016. So it was very, very tough situation, very stressful on everybody.
And, you know, I noticed probably in June of that year that after we lost the battle in federal court, and we were stripped of our right to boycott and strike. I noticed that. That some of the team's commitment was beginning to wane. They, they were beginning to be fearful of what might happen if this fight continued.
And I understood that. It's normal. It's natural. Because these women were [00:32:00] the most courageous people I've ever met. I mean, and I still believe that. To do what they were doing against their current employer and risking their careers, risking their jobs, risking their livelihoods, All of that. That's huge.
That's huge. But I noticed that the commitment was beginning to fade a little bit. Then the team went to the Olympic Games and lost in the quarterfinals. Then that put a dent in our leverage. Then Hope got fired. Hope Solo. Hope was the glue, really, on the team at Equal Pay. U. S. Soccer knew that. They knew.
That if they terminated hope solo, they send a message to the team if we can fire the greatest of all time goalkeeper because of her stance and continuation to push for equal pay, we're sending a message to the rest of the team that we can fire hope solo your jobs in jeopardy. We can fire you [00:33:00] too. And you won't be on the team anymore.
If you continue to push forward for equal pay. So that's the message that US soccer was sending. They weren't saying it, but you know, action speaks louder than words and and I could tell that the commitment was beginning to wane even further. So by the time September rolled around, and we had engaged the great news magazine, 60 minutes to do an investigation of this whole thing.
And they were in the midst of that. When US soccer realized that that was happening, they put on the full court press. To to breach the players commitment to equal pay and get them to the point where they just weren't as committed to it as they were before. And in an order in order to get equal pay, you must remain 100 percent committed all the way through.
It can't be [00:34:00] 99%. It's got to be 100%. I told the team early on before I started representing them. I said, the power you have is only as good as your unity. There are 24 players on the team. You all have to be on the same page. It's going to be 24 to zip 24 0. It can't be 23 to 1. It's going to be 24. Was it because as soon as us soccer sees that there's some vulnerability in the team and in your commitment, they're gonna drive through that vulnerable crack and and defeat you from getting to your objective. So by September of 2016, there was some serious cracks in the armour and the commitment wasn't,
and US soccer knew it. And by the time the 60 minutes piece aired in November of 20, 2016, it kind of blew the whole thing open. Again, the whole world knew then what was going on. [00:35:00] US soccer refused to participate in the 60 minutes. program. They wouldn't be interviewed. They wouldn't allow anybody to be interviewed.
And by then the world really knew that that the women were being maligned to say the least with regard to what they were not getting paid. They were getting paid 75 percent less than the men. 75 percent less than the men period and the EEOC had almost completed their investigation in December. We had a phone call with them and they basically said, Hey, look, if we had to decide today, we would decide that U.S. Soccer had violated the Equal Pay Act, but we have to figure out how to get around U. S. Soccer's defense. So when you, when you file an equal pay case. The only defense the employer has is they can, they can, they can only say that we're paying the women less than the men for some reason other than their gender.
So U. S. soccer's reason for paying the women 75 [00:36:00] percent less. was because they claimed that the men's team accrued more revenue than the women's team, which was false. And we had disproven that early on in March of 2016, during one of our negotiation sessions, because U. S. soccer's own, their own financials showed that in 2013, 2014, 2015, the women accrued 20 million a year in revenues.
And had a basic profit of 17 million, while during the same time period, the men accrued 5 million in revenue and operated at a 2 million operating loss. So we just proved that notion. We just proved U. S. SACA's defense that the women accrued less revenue, so therefore we could pay them less. But the EEOC basically told us that day that, you know, we really have to get our arms around U.S. SACA's revenue argument. We really have to just prove it, and we need your help to just prove it. Which kind of blew my mind [00:37:00] because, you know, we filed the EEOC complaints because you're the government. You have all the power to get what you need from U. S. soccer and you're telling us that U. S. soccer is not providing you.
Okay. So we basically realised that the EEOC was really not going to issue in a decision or an opinion officially about whether or not U. S. soccer had violated the Equal Pay Act, but they basically had told us that day that If they had to decide that day, they would decide that U. S. Soccer had indeed violated the Equal Pay Act.
But the challenge we had at that time was that it was December of 2016. Trump had been elected. So the so the Democratic E. O. C. Was going to go away. And the Republican Trump administration, EEOC, was going to take over. So we knew then that any chance for us to get an equal pay ruling [00:38:00] out of, out of a Republican EEOC was, it was just not going to happen, period.
End of story. So this leads to the lawsuit. So a whole year went by before we heard from the EEOC again. And when we did hear from them in 20. It was actually 20 early 2018. They basically told us, you know, we're the Trump administration. We haven't even looked at the old administration's investigation of this claim.
We're not going to look at it. Tell us what you want us to do. So when you file an EEOC complaint, there are three things that EEOC can do. One, they can rule in your favour, and they can sue the employer, or they can not rule in your favour and do nothing, or they can issue you what's called a right to sue letter, and you can go and sue.
So, make a long story short, [00:39:00] that's what we decided we would do. And in July of 2018. Yeah. Hope solo decided, hey, look, the team is not going to do anything. So by this time. I had been at the end of 2016 two weeks after we talked to the EOC if the team had maintained their commitment to equal pay, we could have pushed through the end of that year and probably gotten equal pay.
Instead, the team decided that after getting much pressure from U. S. soccer, they decided that they wanted to go, they wanted to change the tone of the negotiations They wanted to pursue fair and equitable pay, not equal pay, and they didn't want me to represent them anymore when they decided they were going to go in a different direction.
So that was fine. [00:40:00] So at the end of December of 2016 their player contracts expired, the existing MOU, collective bargaining agreement expired. They were basically worried that if they didn't exceed to U. S. Soccer's wishes that U. S. Soccer would not renew their player agreements and would not keep would not continue to operate and fund the team after the CBA expired.
So they basically were going to exceed to the Federation's wishes. So that's what happened. And so the team continued to be funded while they negotiated a new CBA between December of 2016 and April of 2017. I was out of the picture, but I continued to represent Hope Solo. So in 2018, when the EEOC basically said, You know, we're not going to do anything, but we'll give you a right to sue letter.
That's when Hope decided. I'm going to take things under my own hands, and I'm going to [00:41:00] sue. The U. S. soccer federation. In federal court for violation of the Equal Pay Act and violation of Title 7. And that's what she did. And I was the lawyer that filed the complaint. So then, and we asked the team to come along with us, but they didn't even respond, which was fine.
But by November of 2018 I was told by one of the lawyers for the team that the team was unhappy. With their new CBA that they signed in April of 2017, and I'm not surprised that they were unhappy, because they lost several jobs, they lost several guaranteed contracts, they were getting less pay, they finally realized that they had gotten hoodwinked by the Federation, and that they were probably going to sue U.S. Soccer too. So, on March 8th of 2019, the team, using the lawyer that I had hired to work with the Players Association, that's another story the team sued U. S. Soccer in a class [00:42:00] action lawsuit. They filed their lawsuit in Southern California in L. A. We hope we had filed her lawsuit in San Francisco, federal court in San Francisco.
They filed basically the same lawsuit. On behalf of the team in March of 2019. So basically, we had two lawsuits, same lawsuits, running parallel paths in federal court, one in San Francisco, that's Hope's case, the team's case in L. A., and by May of 2020 unbelievably, the judge in the team's case dismissed their case on what's called a motion for summary judgment, because the judge decided that What the judge did, basically, it sounds pretty soft, but what the judge did was that he, he looked at he looked back five years to see what the top men's team players were being paid.
He looked back the [00:43:00] same five years to see what the top women's team players were being paid, added it all up, divided it by five, and he came out with a number. The men had earned on average, I think it was 212, 000 a piece. And the, over that five year period, where all their money is aggregated and divided by five, and the women had earned 220, 000 on average a year.
So therefore, the judge concluded, the women are making more money than the men. So your equal pay claim is bogus. So your case is dismissed. Crazy decision. Why? Because. The fact that is rarely reported is that the money the women made during that five year look back period, when compared to the men of that 220, 000 average salary compensation they made over the five [00:44:00] year period, 75 percent of that 220, 000 a year were performance bonuses.
That the team was paid for winning the Olympic Games for winning the World Cup for winning all those tournaments. 75 percent of it was performance bonus. So in order for the women to make 220, 000 a year on average, they had to, they had to perform at the highest levels. While the men earned 212, 000 a year winning nothing, doing nothing, but just existing.
So if you subtracted 75 percent from that 220, 000, the women were really making on average 80, 000 a year. And the men were making 12, 000 a year. And that was the premise. That dichotomy was the premise upon which, in 2016, we started this whole equal pay pursuit. Was that delta, that 75 percent difference.
In the money that the women were being paid [00:45:00] versus what the men were being paid, because 75 percent of the money the women earned were performance bonuses for winning world championships and Olympic championships. But that story has never been told. I tell it in this book. That's the reality. So that's what happened with those lawsuits.
So the team's case was dismissed. They appealed. The team appealed. Whether or not they could win on appeal was like 50 50. And advance forward to February of 2022, the team and U. S. soccer decided they would settle their litigation, their lawsuit before the first appellate hearing, which was scheduled for March.
I think they settled their case on February 20th of 2022. They were scheduled for an appellate hearing on March 5th of 2022. They settled it for 24 million, 18 of which went to the team. Six of which, [00:46:00] roughly six, 5. 5 of which went to the lawyers, but the critical thing is people think they settled the lawsuit and got equal pay.
They did not. They settled the lawsuit for money. Equal pay was not a consideration that was delivered to the team when they settled the lawsuit. What U. S. SACA did was that they pledged to get to equal pay if certain conditions were met by the team in the future. And that's what's lost on people. I explain it in the book.
But that's what's lost on people. So they didn't get equal pay. So you fast forward from there, a month or two later, after that, May of 2022, the team entered into a new collective bargaining agreement in which they agreed, the team agreed, to be paid under the same compensation structure and system that U.S. SACA uses to pay the men. It's called the pay [00:47:00] to play compensation system. It's a 100 percent bonus compensation system. And the, and the, and the women have come out and basically said, this is equal pay. Well, it, it really isn't equal pay because the pay to play system us soccer operates the pay to play system.
And. There are a couple of things that U. S. soccer has to do in order for the women to get paid at all. And this pay to play system that the men, that the men have operated under for the past 20 plus years has, had always been offered to the team when a collective bargaining negotiation session started.
Oh, well, you can get equal pay. Take the men's pay to play system. Well, the women never accepted it going back to 2004, 2008, 2012. And even in 2016, when I represented the team, they offered it too. The women never [00:48:00] accepted it. Why? Because the men, their primary source of income. Is playing for their lucrative international teams.
That's their primary source of income The secondary source of income is playing for the united states So they didn't care about a pay to play system, which is 100 bonus system by which you're paid whether you But by virtue of if you win lose or draw You know if the men won a game they get seventeen thousand six twenty five Dollars if they tied it was nine thousand one hundred If they, if they lost or forfeited was 5, 000 a game, but it was all bonus money.
If U.S. soccer decided not to schedule any games for the men, they, they wouldn't earn any money. And that was the fear that the women's team always had. If we accept the pay to play system, us soccer, this is our only source of income. We don't have a lucrative international pro [00:49:00] team to play pro league to play for.
They still don't. So if we accept the pay to play system, U.S. soccer. We're basically at your mercy because if US soccer, if you decide to not schedule any games for us, we don't get paid. So we're not going to accept that. Well, that metric has not changed. They've accepted the pay to play system, thinking it's equal pay, but it's not.
It's the same pay system that the men get paid from, but the devil's in the details. And from, from my perspective, To have equal pay, equal pay should be self executing, meaning if you're doing the same job that I'm doing under the same conditions, you should get paid the same as I get paid. The employer shouldn't have a couple of conditional levers to pull to determine whether or not you're going to get the same as, as I get paid.
Well, that's what U. S. Soccer has. U. S. Soccer has two levers. [00:50:00] They can make a decision to schedule a game or not for the women. And they get to determine the rank, the FIFA ranking of the opponent, which plays into how much money they'll get for a win or a loss. So if your soccer decides they're not scheduling any games, or they're going to schedule games against opponents that are in the bottom tier.
That's not equal pay, they're not going to get the same pay as the men. The only way under the pay to play system that the men and women will get paid the same is if the men and the women play the same number of games a year. Against the same FIFA ranked opponent, and the outcomes are the same, so it's really not equal pay.
Does that make sense?
Ellie: Yeah, definitely. Thank you. That was a great explanation. So, I mean, such a great clarification because I took some time looking at like the news reporting on this case, and you're absolutely right. It's [00:51:00] incredibly positive and kind of a lot of news outlets frame it as the women having achieved equal pay after the end of the case.
Rich Nichols: Yep. And if you continue to look, you will never see anybody from us soccer, the federation saying that it's equal pay. It's only the women's team that said we got equal pay. They didn't. So, so, so for me, there's going to be like a lot of pushback against me and my premise in the book, because the narrative is out there.
It's a feel good narrative. Oh, they got equal pay. No, no, they really didn't. They didn't. Let me show you what they got. This is what they got. And, and over time, I suspect. That the women on the current team, the younger players who are just happy to be on the team. I really don't get care what I get paid.
This is part of the cycle to have is a four year cycle where players come in real happy to be on the team. I don't care what I get paid. And then three or four years in, they look and see what the men are getting. And how [00:52:00] they're performing or not performing and how the women's team is performing it up and realise I'm not getting paid enough.
And then they'll, they raise a stink about it. And it's going to be another brouhaha. And that, that may happen. And it may not, because with, with this whole pay to play system being fronted as equal pay, the Federation was able to get rid of some of the basic infrastructure of the U. S. women's team that really helped to make them successful. Two things in particular.
Guaranteed contracts. There were 24 players on the team, they were paid a fixed salary,
so they knew they were gonna get, they knew they were gonna be on the team, they knew they were gonna get paid. Security. [00:53:00] Two, and they knew they were always gonna be together. This is the 24 players that are always gonna be on the team. The pay to play system is the call up system, where for every tournament, The federation gets to call up different players, so as a result, you never build chemistry with a with a continuum continuum of the same 24 players in the previous situation.
Not only did you have the same 24 players on the team, they were in training residency 250 days out of the year. So as a result, they work together. They trained together. They played together. They had chemistry. So when the U. S. Women's team showed up to the Olympics of the World Cup, you weren't going to beat that team because they play together, work together, live together for 250 days of the year.
That doesn't happen [00:54:00] anymore. There's no longer these long residencies. There's a call up system where the Federation can control who gets called up. And let's be clear, the U. S. Soccer Federation's primary goal is to make sure the men's team is promoted to do well, not the women. Right. They've done everything possible the past 20 years to push down the women's team's ability to succeed.
And because of the women's fortitude, they've succeeded anyway. But now that you've got this new pay to play, call up player system, you're never going to have the continuity of the players. All the time. And they're never going to be making the same amount of money. So there's going to be a lot of uncertainty.
And that's in my, my view. That's what us soccer wants. They want a disjointed women's national team. They don't want the women to do well, they've never wanted the women's team to do well, and they've never thought that the women were [00:55:00] worth it. Getting paid. They told us that straight up. They're not worth it.
So that's the mentality.
Ellie: I mean, thank you. I think quite early on your book you describe it. I think that the defense they just they gave was the idea that it was like a merit pay or if that's the correct phrase.
Rich Nichols: Yeah, merit pay. Exactly. They're getting paid what they're worth. Which was nothing, right? 72, 000.
When we started that negotiation, there were three tiers of compensation for the women's team. The top players, probably 12 of them, 72, 000 a year. The second tier, 54, 000 a year. And the third tier, 36, 000 a year. And it was deemed to be merit pay. That's merit pay. Merit pay for perennial Olympic and World Cup champions.
The top pay that only 12 of the 24 players on the team were getting was 72, 000 a [00:56:00] year. Can you believe it? At the same time, the top, the average man on the men's team was making 290, 290, 000 a year, not winning anything, not qualifying for the Olympics, not qualifying for the world cup. Yeah. It's crazy.
Ellie: Yeah, thank you. I think that illustrates the problem and the ongoing problem even post the case and I think it's very clear why you have a later in your book you have a chapter titled the aftermath and a warning for the future.
Rich Nichols: And you asked me, why did I write the book? This is why I wrote the book.
It took me five years to decide to do it. Right. I started thinking about it in 2018. And it was a very emotional endeavor for me because I was, I was totally invested. In, in, in the team representing the team to get to equal pay. I thought I knew we could get there, but the team had to maintain the commitment at the end, they didn't and I understand why, [00:57:00] when, when human beings are faced with economic survival, or some objective.
Other than that, when you have to choose. People choose survival. Most people choose survival. I understand. Only one player was 100 percent committed to equal pay, and that's Hope Solo, and she lost her career because of it. She was terminated. Her career ended on August 24th of 2016. She was the only player willing to sacrifice at all.
And that's what you need. And so, so it, it bothered me. And I would push it aside my brain and pop back up. I wrote an executive summary back in 2019 of what I might write in the book and I cast it aside that pulled it back out and in 2020 when the case was dismissed. The team's case was dismissed and I just went back and forth.
And finally, It was when [00:58:00] the team agreed to this pay to play compensation system in the CBA and started to say it was equal pay that that really bothered me because it's not equal pay, and the world thinks they got equal pay, and they didn't. They did not. Again, equal pay should be self executing. It shouldn't be conditioned upon the agreement.
The employer getting to pull some levers and make decisions, you can, you can pay. You're not. So that's why. And you know, people may not want to hear the truth and that's fine, but I had to get it out. It's out there. People that want to learn about it. There is.
Ellie: Definitely. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners will be really interested in that.
We will include the link to the book so they can read in full the process of the, of the case and the tactics that.
Rich Nichols: And it does provide the tactic and the blueprint [00:59:00] for pay that women and other, other workforces can use. And the key is the commitment. You gotta maintain 100 percent commitment through all of the travails because it's going to be hard.
I mean, management's going to pull out every stop to keep you from getting it. U. S. Soccer, they sued us in federal court. They sent in McKinsey, the most powerful management consulting firm. They, they, they picked off three or four of the weak players and got them to switch from equal pay to fair and equitable pay.
They came after me. Yeah, it was they did everything possible to thwart equal pay, and they kind of won that back.
Ellie: Yeah, that's clear. I mean, also the timeline in which the fight in the case continued it shows the perseverance required and this is I appreciate a big question to sort of end on but and you sort of I mean, you've touched on it throughout, but if I asked you for your main [01:00:00] advice to, you know, future generations of young girls and women who are aiming to achieve true equality for women in the workplace, what would, what would your advice be?
Rich Nichols: Commitment. Commitment. You got to be committed to it. You just can't give lip service and, oh, I want equal pay. I want this. No, you got to be committed. 100 percent committed. If you are, you, you, you get there, you'll get there. Thank you. Committed commitment.
Ellie: Yeah. Well, I hope people who are listening on this basis are inspired by the actions of Hope Sloan and yourself to, to maintain that commitment and perseverance.
Rich Nichols: Appreciate it.
Ellie: And thank you very much for, for being interviewed today.
Rich Nichols: Appreciate it. Thanks.
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