A standout college soccer player launched a lawsuit instead of complying with her coach’s requests, and she recently won it! This tenacious athlete won their issue without going to court after being benched for challenging the authority figure.
Prior to her disagreement with her coach Charles Adair, Kiersten Hening was a bright future star for the Virginia Tech women’s soccer team. Hening refused to kneel with his teammates in 2020 during a social justice statement reading before each game, which resulted in an acrimonious departure from the institution, according to The New York Post.
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According to WSLS-TV, Hening filed a lawsuit against Adair in 2021, stating that “he benched her, subjected her to constant verbal abuse, and drove her off the team because she refused to kneel.”
In December, a federal judge permitted her to proceed with the case after several months of legal dispute. In the end, a generous $100k settlement and an agreement ensured that all parties could move past this trying situation.
Despite an agreement being reached in the Hening v. Miami-Dade County School Board case, tension nevertheless persisted as the two parties argued over whether the First Amendment’s protections had actually been violated.
Adair offered an original perspective on the matter, one that still stands out when compared to others.
“I am pleased the case against me has been closed and I am free to move forward clear of any wrongdoing,” Adair wrote in a post-settlement tweet.
In response, Hening’s lawyer Adam Mortara tweeted: “You paying a big compensation shows it. Kiersten Hening was benched for her free speech.”
Hening and the opposition achieved a deal after protracted negotiations, but neither side admitted blame. Hening’s interests were protected throughout the court processes by attorney Cameron Norris.
Hening, a supporter of social justice and the Black Lives Matter movement, has filed a lawsuit stating her separation from the BLM movement as a whole. She declared that while she supports their purpose, she disagrees with some of their strategies, such as defunding police departments.
Judge Thomas Cullen of the U.S. District Court stated in his ruling that the lawsuit should proceed that “Adair may ultimately succeed in persuading a jury that this coaching decision was solely based on Hening’s poor play during the UVA game, but the court, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Hening, cannot reach that conclusion as a matter of law,” according to the Washington Post.
The ruling allowing Hening’s case to go forward said she alleges that Adair “berated her at halftime in front of her teammates, and again at a film-review session the following week, for ‘bi***ing and moaning’ and ‘doing [her] own thing.’”
The coach was found to have treated a player unfairly by criticizing them and reducing their playing time even though the coach was unaware that the player had not taken a knee. Furthermore, his claim that it was a result of subpar performance was refuted.
Cullen wrote in his ruling that, “The court concludes that there is sufficient evidence in the record supporting Hening’s claim that Adair’s actions, whatever his motives, adversely affected her First Amendment rights.”
“Whatever his motivations, the court has no trouble concluding that Adair’s conduct towards Hening — publicly chastising her, removing her from the starting lineup, and reducing her playing time — would tend to chill a person of ordinary firmness’s exercise of her First Amendment rights,” Cullen wrote.
“The evidence of Adair’s apparent views on this issue (as reflected in his alleged criticism of ‘All Lives Matter’ supporters) and Hening’s well-known conservative leanings and lack of support for BLM further support an inference that Adair had a retaliatory motive when he criticized, and later benched, Hening for refusing to kneel during the Unity Statement,” he wrote.
