U. of California to Pay Former Coach $3.5-Million to Settle Sex-Bias Lawsuit

The University of California system will pay more than $3.5-million to settle a sex-discrimination lawsuit with a former coach and athletics official on its Berkeley campus who sued after she was laid off, in 2004.

The official, Karen Moe Humphreys, who won an Olympic gold medal as a swimmer, coached women’s swimming at Cal from 1978 to 1992. She was an assistant athletics director when the university laid her off, which she said was in retaliation for her whistle-blowing about a hostile work environment for women in the athletics department.

According to the terms of the settlement, the university will pay Ms. Humphreys $3.5-million in lawyers’ fees and other litigation costs, and also reimburse her full back pay and benefits. She will be reinstated as a university employee in an unspecified post until January 2008, when she will retire, according to a joint statement released by Ms. Humphreys and Berkeley.

In a similar case involving a former women’s volleyball coach and California State University at Fresno, a jury last week ordered the university to pay the coach, Lindy Vivas, nearly $6-million. —Sara Lipka