Cal Baptist faces Title IX lawsuit from male athletes after cutting men’s wrestling, golf, swim team

A California college under fire for downsizing its men’s athletic program is now being accused of violating Title IX — by discriminating against male students based on their sex.

Three collegiate wrestlers argued in a federal complaint filed Thursday that California Baptist University in Riverside engaged in illegal discrimination by cutting the men’s wrestling, golf, and swimming and diving programs while leaving women’s teams untouched.

“CBU did not eliminate these teams because they were failing, because of money, or because of space,” said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Eastern Division) by attorneys with the Pacific Legal Foundation.

“It eliminated them for one reason only: the sex of the students who participate in them,” said the complaint. “CBU cut these teams to reduce the number of male athletes.”

The case seeks to reopen a legal issue that has dogged Title IX since its inception in 1972: whether the federal civil rights law banning sex discrimination in education requires colleges to maintain an equivalent number of female and male athletes.

In 1979, the U.S. Department of Education under President Carter issued a “three-part test” saying that colleges may be considered in compliance with Title IX if sports opportunities for men and women are “substantially proportionate” to their undergraduate enrollment rates.

The policy guidance led to the elimination of hundreds of men’s sports teams, notably baseball, gymnastics and tennis, as colleges sought to balance their numbers without cutting football, a high-value sport with a large roster that has no women’s equivalent.

Cal Baptist doesn’t have a football team, but university officials announced Jan. 2 that the three men’s programs would be terminated at the end of the 2025-26 season, citing the university’s upcoming move from the Western Athletic Conference to the Big West Conference in July.

The Big West does not sponsor men’s wrestling, but its three members with wrestling teams compete in the Pac-12 and Big XII, the lawsuit said.

The university said the decision to cut the men’s programs was made to “provide remaining student-athletes and teams with the best opportunities moving forward,” insisting that the primary driver was not financial, and that any fundraising to cover the cost of the teams would have no impact.

“A number of factors were considered including community impact, Title IX, the House settlement, and available resources and facilities,” said the university in its FAQ.

The House settlement refers to the NCAA’s landmark 2025 agreement allowing colleges to compensate directly their student-athletes for their names, images and likenesses.

By dropping the three teams, the university lost 69 male athletes, bringing its male-to-female student-athlete ratio in line with its enrollment ratio, which is 38% male and 62% female. The decision also reduces the number of men’s teams to six, while women will still have 10 teams.

The cuts ignited backlash from Cal Baptist alumni and students. Keep CBU Wrestling asked the university’s board of trustees last week for a three-year continuance while raising $1.2 million to support the program.

Keep CBU Wrestling and the American Sports Council filed a petition last week asking the U.S. Department of Education to repeal the 1979 policy guidance.

“Schools facing pressure to meet proportionality targets have eliminated smaller men’s sports like swimming, tennis, and track, rather than invest in new women’s programs,” said the March 17 petition. “But singling out members of one sex and limiting their opportunities does nothing to remedy discrimination against members of the opposite sex. This approach gets Title IX backward.”

Caleb Trotter, Pacific Legal Foundation senior attorney, said that the Carter-era Title IX guidance has survived previous legal challenges, but that the regulatory landscape has changed, citing the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision overturning the Chevron deference doctrine.

Pacific Legal argued that the Cal Baptist wrestlers behind the filing – Paul Kelly, Cooper Shore and Jesse Vasquez – now face a choice between transferring schools or “giving up the sport they love.”

Micah Parker, Cal Baptist vice president for athletics, said in his Jan. 2 announcement that the “decision was not made lightly.”