The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team’s equal pay settlement, announced on February 22, 2022, resolved a six-year fight with the U.S. Soccer Federation for $24 million and a binding commitment to pay the women’s and men’s national teams at identical rates. The deal broke into $22 million in back pay for a class of 61 players and a $2 million fund for post-career and charitable purposes, with individual players eligible to apply for up to $50,000 from that fund. Crucially, the money was contingent on ratifying a new collective bargaining agreement guaranteeing equal pay going forward — a condition met three months later.
How the $24 Million Breaks Down
The $22 million in back pay covers current and former USWNT players in a class stretching back to June 2015, the period certified by the district court in November 2019. The separate $2 million fund is earmarked for players’ post-career goals and charitable efforts tied to women’s and girls’ soccer, structured as a grant pool players can draw from up to the $50,000 individual cap.
The players had originally sought roughly $67 million in back pay and damages when they filed suit in 2019, so the recovery represents a fraction of the demand. What made the settlement more than a money deal was the tie to future compensation: without a new CBA equalizing pay, the settlement did not take effect.
The Equal Pay CBA That Made the Settlement Effective
On May 18, 2022, U.S. Soccer and both national team players’ unions signed new collective bargaining agreements running through 2028. The agreements rebuilt compensation for the men’s and women’s teams around identical economic terms:
- Appearance fees for friendlies and official matches are the same for both teams.
- Performance bonuses are standardized across the two teams.
- Commercial revenue from broadcasting, sponsorships, and partnerships is split evenly between the men’s and women’s pools.
- Players receive a share of ticket revenue from home matches, with additional bonuses for sellouts.
The most distinctive provision addressed FIFA World Cup prize money, where the gap between tournaments is enormous. The men’s 2022 World Cup pool was $440 million; the women’s 2023 pool was $150 million. Under the new CBAs, both teams pool their FIFA prize money, deduct 10 percent for U.S. Soccer youth programs, and split the remainder equally. That made U.S. Soccer the first federation in the world to equalize World Cup prize money between its men’s and women’s teams.
The practical effect showed quickly. After the U.S. men earned roughly $13 million by reaching the Round of 16 at the 2022 World Cup, the pooling arrangement guaranteed the USWNT over $6 million from the 2023 Women’s World Cup regardless of result — more than the $4.3 million FIFA awarded that tournament’s champion.
The women’s team gave up something in the trade. Guaranteed federation salaries, a hallmark of the prior USWNT CBA, were eliminated in favor of the unified pay-for-play structure. U.S. Soccer also stopped paying NWSL league salaries for national team players. In their place, a designated group of “Benefits Players” selected annually continues to receive health, dental, and vision insurance, up to six months of paid parental leave, and short-term disability coverage.
How the Case Reached a Settlement
The dispute began on March 31, 2016, when five players — Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, and Becky Sauerbrunn — filed a wage discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The complaint alleged that women were paid thousands less than male players at nearly every level of competition, despite the women’s team generating close to $20 million more in revenue than the men’s team in 2015. One cited example: women earned $1,350 for winning a friendly, while male players were guaranteed $5,000 regardless of outcome and could earn up to $17,625.
After the EEOC issued right-to-sue letters, Morgan, Rapinoe, Sauerbrunn, and Lloyd joined 24 teammates in filing a class action on March 8, 2019, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The case, Morgan et al. v. U.S. Soccer Federation Inc. (Case No. 2:19-cv-01717), brought claims under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
On May 1, 2020, Judge R. Gary Klausner granted summary judgment to U.S. Soccer on the equal pay claims. He concluded the players had not established a prima facie case, focusing on total compensation rather than pay rates and finding that the women had earned more than the men on both cumulative and average per-game bases during the class period. He also cited the difficulty of comparing two structurally different CBAs: the women had negotiated for guaranteed salaries and benefits absent from the men’s pay-to-play deal.
The players appealed to the Ninth Circuit. The EEOC filed a 47-page amicus brief arguing that the district court had erred by comparing total earnings rather than rates of pay, and that the existence of different collective bargaining agreements was not a defense under the Equal Pay Act. The men’s national team filed its own supporting brief. Oral argument was set for March 7, 2022. The parties announced the settlement two weeks before that date.
The Separate Working Conditions Settlement
The $24 million deal covered the pay claims only. The players’ Title VII claims about travel, hotels, venues, and support staffing were resolved earlier, in a separate settlement filed December 1, 2020, and given final approval by Judge Klausner on April 13, 2021. Under that agreement, U.S. Soccer committed for at least four years to provide the women’s team an equal number of charter flights, comparable hotel accommodations, equally acceptable venues and playing surfaces, and equal professional support staffing of 18 to 21 positions per team.
The Federal Law That Followed
The settlement accelerated federal legislation covering U.S. athletes more broadly. The Equal Pay for Team USA Act, introduced by Senators Maria Cantwell and Shelley Moore Capito, requires the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and all 50 national governing bodies to provide athletes with equal pay, medical care, travel accommodations, and expense reimbursements regardless of gender, subject to potential decertification for noncompliance. The Senate passed it unanimously on December 8, 2022, the House cleared it later that month, and President Biden signed it into law on January 5, 2023, as Public Law 117-340.
What the Settlement Did and Didn’t Change
The USWNT settlement reshaped compensation inside U.S. Soccer but did not extend automatically to other federations. No other national soccer federation has replicated the pooled prize money, identical match fees, and shared commercial revenue structure the U.S. adopted. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has stated an ambition to fully equalize men’s and women’s World Cup prize money by 2026 and 2027, though FIFA has acknowledged that broadcaster and sponsor offers for the women’s tournament remain far below those for the men’s.
Megan Rapinoe called the settlement “an incredible turning point in women’s sport.” As a legal matter, the case ended without a Ninth Circuit ruling on whether the district court’s total-compensation analysis was correct, so the underlying Equal Pay Act question the EEOC pressed in its amicus brief was not resolved on appeal. What resolved it, in practice, was the new CBA.