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.
