Iowa settles discrimination lawsuit about football recruit's learning disability

From the Des Moines Register in Iowa:

The mother of a prospective recruit to the Iowa football team in 1995 has collected a $500,000 out-of-court settlement from the school to end an 11-year-old discrimination allegation, state records show.

The Iowa State Appeals Board ratified the settlement last month at the request of the University of Iowa and the Iowa Attorney General's office. School officials made the settlement in July.Marcus Mills, general counsel for the University of Iowa, said Sept. 3 that the payment ended the legal battle waged first by Michael Bowers, a New Jersey resident and prospective recruit to Iowa, and later by his mother, Kathleen. They claimed that Iowa, Temple University and the NCAA had kept Bowers from getting a football scholarship because he had a learning disability.

Bowers was recruited briefly by former Iowa assistant coach Frank Verducci to play football, but never visited the campus. Temple recruited Bowers to play football, but he never played there either, Mills said.The lawsuit filed in federal court in New Jersey in 1997 claimed that the NCAA's core course eligibility requirements illegally kept him from playing college football.

Bowers said that the NCAA should have granted him a waiver under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Bowers, who died in June 2002 from a drug overdose, also had accused Iowa officials of discrimination on the grounds that they had stopped recruiting him because of his learning disability.

Iowa officials claimed that the football staff at that time under coach Hayden Fry had stopped recruiting Bowers because they didn't think he could play Big Ten Conference football.

Mills said the out-of-court accord was prompted after a federal appeals court ruled in 2007 that Bowers may have been discriminated against under the disabilities act, and ordered a trial on the claim. A federal district court judge earlier had ruled that neither the NCAA nor the schools discriminated against Bowers, Mills said.

Mills said school officials, with the assistance of the Attorney General's office, decided to settle the case because the risk of losing meant the possibility of having to pay from $3 million to $4 million in legal expenses.

"The issue of potential significant legal fees, given that the case was over 10 years old, that could be awarded to the plaintiff were a consideration," Mills said. "In these types of cases, a plaintiff can win a relatively small award, and then be awarded attorneys' fees many times greater than the award itself."

In July, a federal jury found in favor of the NCAA in the Bowers case, according to a news release from the NCAA. The jury decided that Bowers didn't have a disability as defined by the federal rehabilitation laws and that the NCAA was not a "place of public accommodation" as required by New Jersey's anti-discrimination laws.

But Mills defended the school's decision to settle the case, saying that the issues facing the NCAA and Iowa in the case were substantially different. He said the NCAA had to defend its policies regarding eligibility and its impact against students with disabilities. Iowa had to defend its interest and evaluation of Bowers as a potential recruit to play football.

"Given those significant differences, the outcome of the trial with the NCAA doesn't cause us to question the wisdom of that decision," Mills said. "The university did not admit and indeed contested liability on all the issues in the case. Nevertheless, we believe the decision to settle the matter prior to trial was a prudent one, given the risks involved."

Mills also said Temple reached an out-of-court agreement, but hasn't disclosed the amount.