Seven student-athletes have sued administrators at Sonoma State University and the California State University system over a controversial plan to end all intercollegiate sports at SSU by the end of this academic year.
The plan is part of a proposed package of $24 million in budget cuts facing the campus in Rohnert Park.
As reported by The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, the 53-page lawsuit, filed Friday in Sonoma County Superior Court, alleges that by announcing the cuts well after the spring semester began, administrators deprived student-athletes and non-athlete students of information that could have affected their enrollment decisions. This amounting to “fraudulent conduct,” according to the complaint.
“Defendants knew that student-athletes were giving up numerous opportunities to play college sports at other universities,” the lawsuit states. “Yet despite knowing all that, Defendants still went out and continued recruiting Plaintiffs and other student-athletes to Sonoma State without ever disclosing that they were about to eliminate all athletics.”
Six of the seven student athletes named as plaintiffs were recruited to SSU for the fall semester of 2024 or the spring semester this year. They are being represented pro bono by the San Francisco-based Joseph Saveri Law Firm.
The lawsuit names SSU’s interim president Emily Cutrer and California State University chancellor Mildred García, accusing them of violating procedural requirements for program discontinuation, Marisa Endicott and Austin Muprhy of The Press Democrat reported.
The group is not seeking damages but rather for a judge to stop SSU from “unlawfully cutting athletics and numerous academic programs, severely damaging the college careers of countless Sonoma State students.”
Sonoma State’s financial crisis is among the most dire of several CSU Northern California campuses that have seen dramatic drops in enrollment over the past decade along with rising costs that have opened up massive budget gaps, Endicott and Murphy reported. SSU administrators, led by Cutrer, ordered an unprecedented slate of cuts that would eliminate more than 100 faculty, lecturer, coaching and staff positions, six academic departments and two dozen degree programs.
All of SSU’s 11 athletic programs, with an annual roster of 195 to 235 students, would be dropped at the end of this school year. Athletic scholarships will be honored for students who want to stay if they continue to meet academic requirements, but many have entered the NCAA transfer portal.
As recently as the fall semester, SSU hired an athletic trainer and installed new scoreboards, making the Jan. 22 announcement that all sports were being eliminated particularly shocking.
“Essentially, we were recruiting student-athletes to a university that doesn’t have a future for them,” said Emiria Salzmann, head coach of the SSU women’s soccer team. “It’s unethical to do that.”
According to The Press Democrat, Salzmann, an SSU graduate in her 14th year as the women’s soccer coach, spoke of students who had transferred into Sonoma State and had been there “for all of two days” before learning their sport was behind eliminated. In “a couple cases,” she said, those student-athletes lost both their sport and their academic major. “That creates trauma.”
Per the reporting of Endicott and Murphy, 36 coaches and staff are being laid off as part of the athletics cuts.
The lawsuit calls into question SSU’s calculation of savings, calling the cuts unlawful because they rely on data contradicted by independent financial analysis and SSU’s own financial information submitted to the Department of Education, the reporters wrote. The complaint notes Cutrer has made conflicting statements on savings and claimed instead that two independent analyses found athletics “is either a net financial positive to the University, or roughly financially neutral” when accounting for revenues generated by the department and anticipated loss in enrollment.
SSU athletes, coaches and alumni launched a “Save Seawolves Athletics” campaign within days of the announced cuts and filed two federal civil rights complaints. A petition to “Save Seawolves Sports” has garnered more than 5,700 signatures, The Press Democrat reported.
