Class Action Targets NCAA Coaches for Alleged Sexual Contact With College Athletes
The lawsuit proposes a class of NCAA student-athletes, male and female, spanning back to 1992, which will get quite large, considering that 460,000 student athletes compete in NCAA sports every year.
March 11, 2020 at 05:31 PM
3 minute read
The original version of this story was published on Texas Lawyer
Young woman running. Photo: lzf/Shutterstock.com
A college track-and-field coach, who formerly worked at The University of Texas at Austin, is a defendant in a new putative class action lawsuit that alleges the National Collegiate Athletic Association harmed student-athletes by permitting coaches' sexual contact with them.
Three former student-athletes have sued coach John Rembao, the NCAA and its board of governors. But they're looking to broaden their lawsuit into a class action with NCAA student-athletes—male and female—spanning back to 1992. Their proposed class would be large, considering the NCAA has 460,000 student-athletes competing in 24 sports every year, according to its website.
"As with a lot of these cases that are happening right now, this is another case where an organization is putting its reputation, its profits, over the safety of the students that it should be protecting," said plaintiff lawyer Annika K. Martin, a partner in Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein in New York.
Martin represents the three named plaintiffs. She's teamed with Lieff Cabraser partner Jonathan Selbin of San Francisco, and Beth Fegan, who is founding partner and managing member of FeganScott of Chicago.
Ties to UT-Austin
The allegations against Rembao stem from his time as a UT-Austin coach.
Lead plaintiff Erin Aldrich alleged that Rembao groomed and sexually abused her at the University of Arizona, and retaliated against her at UT-Austin.
Fellow plaintiffs Jessica Johnson and Londa Bevins both claimed that while they were at UT-Austin, Rembao groomed, sexually harassed and abused them, according to the 106-page putative class action complaint in Aldrich v. NCAA, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose.
"Rembao used textbook maneuvers to manipulate these young athletes into getting what he wanted," said Fegan in a statement. "Rembao continually used the coach-athlete dynamic to his advantage—threatening to strip them of their scholarships and insisting on 'closed-door' meetings—behavior that was, in effect, sanctioned by the NCAA because of it's lack of regulations to protect student-athletes from such misconduct."
In addition to UT-Austin, Rembao also worked from 2001 to 2005 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit accuses the NCAA of failing to set rules prohibiting sexual contact between coaches and athletes, and of allowing coaches with histories of sexual abuse to move among schools uninhibited. In addition to seeking compensation for alleged victims, the plaintiffs are asking the court for injunctive relief that will force the NCAA to establish rules and safeguards.
Rembao didn't return a call or email seeking comment before deadline.
NCAA spokeswoman Emily James declined to comment.
News came out in December 2019 that Rembao was suspended by the U.S. Center for SafeSport for misconduct, the OC Register reported.
Read the class action:
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