Casper – Two female coaches have filed a federal lawsuit against the Natrona County School District, saying they received harsher discipline after they let their students perform a prank than male coaches have received for worse behavior.
Sheryl Schroefel and Melisa Mahoney filed the lawsuit Monday.
They claim the school district violated their rights under both state and federal laws.
The school district hasn’t filed a response to the lawsuit.
Superintendent Jim Lowham declined to comment on the case.
The women had been girls basketball coaches at Centennial Junior High School. Their lawsuit says they held a sleep over for players in 2002 at the school on the condition that the students remain on school property.
However, the lawsuit states that during the sleepover, Schroefel and Mahoney allowed the students to leave the school to place toilet paper and other items on the lawns of two male coaches as a prank.
The male coaches complained, and the school district suspended each of the female coaches from teaching for 21 days and banned them from coaching for two years.
“The discipline imposed upon the plaintiffs is discriminatory,” the lawsuit says. “Male coaches who engage in more egregious conduct are not disciplined.”
The Wyoming Department of Employment’s Fair Employment Program investigated the women’s claims.
The lawsuit includes a letter from the Fair Employment Program that lists male employees’ offenses, including “predatory sexual behavior,” using school computers to look at pornography in a classroom and leaving students alone without supervision, and states that those offenses resulted in, at most, three days of paid leave.
The women’s attorney, Diane Smith, said she hopes a judge will allow her to show the Fair Employment Program’s letter to a jury and said she hopes that the male employees’ disciplinary records will be allowed in as evidence.
