In fall 2019, the Burlington High School girls’ soccer team went viral. After scoring a game-winning goal against South Burlington, the athletes lifted up their jerseys to reveal shirts emblazoned with the phrase #EQUALPAY. They’d designed them over the summer to raise awareness about the wage gap between men and women.
The feel-good story was picked up by Anderson Cooper, National Public Radio and others. The team was recognized in a resolution by the Burlington City Council. Pro soccer phenom Abby Wambach gave the young women a shout-out on Twitter.
As Burlington High School’s athletic director at the time, Jeanne Hulsen had a front-row seat for the fanfare. She was proud of the players and shelled out $25 for her own #EQUALPAY jersey.
Behind the scenes, though, Hulsen felt conflicting emotions. Four years earlier, she had learned she was underpaid compared to other athletic directors in Chittenden County, all of whom were men. She presented her findings to the Burlington district leadership, to no avail.
Then, in 2020, less than a year after the soccer team stood up for #EQUALPAY, Hulsen was dealt another blow. She received an email from the human resources department saying her position was being eliminated in favor of a new one: head of athletics for the district. Hulsen, then 59, applied for the role, but it went to a man who was decades younger — at a starting salary substantially higher than Hulsen’s pay after 22 years on the job.
That sent her on a five-year fight to right what she perceived as the wrong done by her longtime employer. Last November, the district agreed to pay Hulsen $475,000 to settle the lawsuit she filed in U.S. District Court in November 2020. Hulsen’s lawyer, John Franco, said his research indicates Hulsen’s is likely the nation’s largest equal-pay settlement case in the public sector for a single plaintiff.
District officials still believe Hulsen’s claim was “baseless” and were confident about prevailing at trial, according to spokesperson Russ Elek. But the district’s insurance company made the decision to settle the case.
For Hulsen, the result feels like justice, as well as a symbolic victory for the many women who have been subject to pay discrimination.
“This is a common story, but to fight it is very uncommon,” Hulsen said. “It’s so hard to do.”
Though some see gender inequality as a problem that’s been solved, data suggest it’s still pervasive. A report released last month by Vermont Works for Women and two partner organizations found that in 2023, women working full time in the state earned 86 cents for every dollar paid to men, which translates to $9,000 less in annual earnings. The gap is even larger between women and men with advanced degrees.
Women often don’t speak up, let alone file a lawsuit, when they learn they’re being paid less.
But women often don’t speak up, let alone file a lawsuit, when they learn they’re being paid less, often for fear of retaliation. University of Vermont professor emerita of economics Stephanie Seguino, who served as an expert witness for Hulsen, said “societal gender bias” in the workplace persists despite laws to address it.
“Women are constantly given the message that they’re not as productive, not as good and deserving as men,” Seguino said.
Hulsen is used to operating in male-dominated spaces. A multisport athlete who grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., she was the only girl on the varsity boys’ tennis team in high school and has coached at Middlebury College and the University of Vermont, where she earned her master’s degree in recreational management. When she was a high school athletic director — first in Herkimer, N.Y., then in Burlington — most of her counterparts were men. Nationally, just 12 to 15 percent of school athletic directors are female, according to the Vermont Principals’ Association.
When Hulsen was hired by the Burlington School District in 1998, her salary was $30,000, or about $48,000 in 2020 dollars, according to her lawsuit. Despite her low pay, she said she was proud of what she accomplished in Burlington: helping to bring in new sports including lacrosse, volleyball, ultimate frisbee and girls’ ice hockey, and overseeing construction of a multimillion-dollar outdoor athletic complex with a turf field, bathrooms and a concession stand.
In spring 2015, Hulsen said, she enlisted the help of the high school’s then-principal, Amy Mellencamp, to advocate for a raise. Mellencamp and Hulsen met with the interim superintendent, Howard Smith, to present to him the salary comparison of athletic directors in Chittenden County.
According to Hulsen, Smith rejected the idea of a pay increase, warning that she would need to reapply for the job if it had higher compensation — and might not be rehired.
At the end of the 2014-15 school year, Hulsen’s full-time assistant retired, and the district hired a replacement in a half-time role. That meant Hulsen had to take on extra administrative duties without more pay, she said.
This phenomenon, in which women are given additional responsibilities in the workplace and at home without compensation or recognition, is referred to by feminist economists as “invisible work,” Seguino noted.
After her request for a raise was rebuffed, Hulsen said she came to believe there was nothing she could do. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, she busied herself with online meetings and trying to learn the changing guidelines for school sports.
She assumed work would look different when she returned in fall 2020. But in June, weeks before her contract expired, she received the email that said her position would be terminated in favor of a new district-level head of athletics, who would also oversee sports at the district’s two middle schools.
Elek, the district spokesperson, said the high school’s sports parent-teacher organization, Seahorse Pride, had started advocating for a change in the athletic director position years earlier. But it took until 2020 for the administration and school board to agree to restructure the job.
Hulsen applied and had what she described as a “pro forma” virtual interview that went nowhere. According to Elek, the hiring committee determined she was not among the three strongest candidates.
In the middle of the pandemic and at nearly 60 years old, Hulsen found herself with no job or health insurance. She said she was particularly hurt that no one from the district thanked her for her 22 years of service.
“Quite frankly, I was traumatized,” she said.
What spurred Hulsen to sue the district, though, was learning that the person who got the job, Quaron Pinckney — a man in his late twenties with just a few years of relevant experience — would be paid almost $96,000 to start. That’s on par with other area athletic directors, but substantially more than the $70,000 Hulsen had earned in her final year. The athletics assistant position was also bumped up from half- to full-time after Hulsen left, according to court documents.
Pinckney still works for the district and made more than $117,000 in fiscal year 2024, according to the city’s most recent annual report.
To prove a claim of an equal pay violation, one must show that a man is being paid more than a woman to do a comparable job, explained Franco, the Burlington attorney who represented Hulsen. It is not necessary to prove discriminatory intent — only a discriminatory result.
Still, it felt to Hulsen and Franco that they were up against long odds. The school district argued that the pay differential had to do with the addition of more responsibilities in the newly defined role, including oversight of middle school sports and more administrative and supervisory duties.
“Clearly, based on the significant expansion of responsibilities, an increased rate of pay was appropriate and necessary,” Elek said in a statement.
Hulsen and her legal team, meanwhile, maintained that her workload was comparable to the new director of athletics and that she worked more days per year.
Hulsen and Franco were both particularly incensed when the school district’s lawyers, in a motion filed last October, implied that gender-based discrimination was largely a problem of the past, stating that the district could not be held responsible for “general societal ills.”
But just weeks before the case was set to go to trial, on November 12, Hulsen and the district reached a settlement. The district’s insurer will pay $295,000 directly to Hulsen for lost wages and benefits, and $180,000 to cover her legal fees. The district’s legal expenses — in excess of $150,000 — were also covered by the insurer, according to Elek, the district spokesperson.
Had the district rejected the insurance company’s decision to settle, Elek said, it would have been on the hook for all legal fees associated with fighting the lawsuit in court, rather than just the $5,000 deductible and payroll taxes it paid as part of the settlement.
Under the agreement, “no party makes any admission concerning the strength or weakness of any claim or admits any liability,” the settlement states.
But the district has softened its stance on that inflammatory court filing last fall. Tom Flanagan, the current Burlington superintendent, said in a statement that the district “recognizes that the gender wage gap is a real, prevalent issue in society, and we regret that the motion submitted by our legal team was not clear on this.”
“Our equity policies lead our HR team to review salaries annually for equity,” Flanagan’s statement read. “If we identify a pay discrepancy, we correct it as promptly as possible.”
Today, Hulsen works part time at the EDGE and is still playing competitive tennis and pickleball at age 65. She regrets the way her career ended but said she hopes her story will encourage other women to advocate for themselves in the workplace, just as she was inspired by the women who fought for equal pay before she did.
“It’s so important to keep walking that path,” Hulsen said. “You can lose rights, you can lose opportunities, if you don’t keep walking that path.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Settling the Score | An equal pay lawsuit against the Burlington School District ends in a nearly $500,000 award”
This article appears in January 28 • 2026.
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