When was the last time you thought of Vanguard University? Us, neither. Well, the private Christian college is now sure to make headlines gracias to a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court alleging it broke a contract with a Costa Mesa youth soccer group because it served Mexican kids.
The club in question is the Mission Viejo Pateadores, which has hosted youth soccer games, leagues, and academies across OC for nearly 30 years. In 2010, the Pats signed an agreement with Vanguard in which the club contributed $196,000 to improve the school’s athletic fields in return for use of them, and for Vanguard to “keep the fields in appropriate and playable conditions so as to allow for continued use by the PATS,” per the suit. The Pats doubled down on their investment in 2012 by contributing to the building of even more facilities: an artificial turf soccer field, a scoreboard, and three Futsal courts, all with the understanding that the Pats had access to everything.
The chronology delineated in the lawsuit speaks of broken promises of upkeep, construction deadlines, usage and the like. But what’s interesting is the linchpin for the Pats filing the lawsuit: according to them, the university eventually blocked the Pats from using the Futsal courts in the evening after they received requests “toward ridding the neighborhood of a certain color of person that the neighbors did not like” using the Vanguard soccer complex.
And that color? Mexican.
“The PATS soon learned,” according to the suit, “that VU’s conduct and breaches were motivated by the disapproval of the presence of Latino families that began to frequent the VU facilities to support their children with outward disapproval, racial comments and discriminatory conduct coming from VU, VU’s employees, and VU’s neighbors.” Among that conduct: “discriminatory comments and/or racial slurs being made toward the families and children; and/or the neighbors’ refusal to return soccer balls that had inadvertently made their way into the neighboring community.”
That last affront is TOTAL douche chill, amiright? Even worse, according to the suit, when they asked Vanguard “how [they] could help the situation and continue a positive relationship with VU,” school employees told them the nonprofit “should get rid of the Mexican league” because “[it] looked like we have a bunch of gang-bangers on campus.”
Not very Christ-like!
The official causes for action detailed in the lawsuit are breach of contract, breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, conversion, for an accounting, constructive trust, and unjust enrichment. The Pats are represented by Manly, Stewart, and Finaldi, the legendary law firm that sued the Catholic Church over all their nasty pedophile priests (and pedophile protectors) and is now doing the same to the Los Angeles Unified School District. May the Pateadores achieve the following against Vanguard:
