Page:Veronica Ollier v. Sweetwater Union High School District (September 19, 2014) US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.djvu/43

 between” protected activity and allegedly retaliatory action can be “strong circumstantial evidence of causation.”). Plaintiffs have met their burden: They engaged in protected activity in May 2006, July 2006, and April 2007. Coach Martinez was fired in July 2006 and the annual awards banquet was canceled in Spring 2007. The timing of these events is enough in context to show causation in this Title IX retaliation case. That the district court found as much was not clearly erroneous. Plaintiffs state a prima facie case of Title IX retaliation.

B

Sweetwater offered the district court four legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons for firing Coach Martinez: First, Castle Park wanted to replace its walk-on coaches with certified teachers. Second, Coach Martinez mistakenly played an ineligible student in 2005 and forced the softball team to forfeit games as a result. Third, he allowed an unauthorized parent to coach a summer softball team. Fourth, he filed late paperwork related to the softball team’s participation in a Las Vegas tournament—a mishap that Sweetwater said created an unnecessary liability risk. The district court rejected each reason, concluding that all four were “not credible and are pretextual.”

Sweetwater argues on appeal that the district court committed clear error by disregarding these legitimate, non-retaliatory reasons because it “failed to evaluate and weigh the evidence before it” when it “looked past the abundance of uncontradicted information preexisting the Title IX complaints &hellip; and focused almost entirely” on Coach Martinez’s termination. Sweetwater also adds that Castle Park did not renew Coach Martinez’s contract in part because