Members of a Victoria girls softball team have been awarded $1,000 each “for injury to their dignity, feelings and self-respect” because they were being discriminated against, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruled.

The Beacon Hill Little League major girls softball team filed a complaint with the tribunal after national Little League organizers funded the travel costs of the winning boys baseball team during a 2005 tournament but not the winning girls softball team.

In a ruling released Monday, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal said Hawkins’s complaint was “justified.”

“The impact of the policy on the team gives rise to a prima facie case of sex-based discrimination that impedes the team’s full and free participation in the social and cultural life of British Columbia,” the ruling said.

Coach Bill Hawkins says Little League’s tournament policy discriminated against girls playing softball in comparison with boys playing baseball by excluding the girls from a travel fund. (CBC)

On July 24, 2005, the winning boys team in a baseball divisional championship held in Victoria were provided with a travel package, including airplane tickets, for the team to attend the national championship in Ontario.

The following day, the winning girls team in the corresponding softball divisional championship, also held in Victoria, were not given the same travel expenses. Both teams were playing at the Beacon Hill Little League’s “major” level, for players as old as 12 years of age.

To attend the national championship in Ontario, the girls team had to raise about $20,000 for travel expenses in five days, the ruling said.

The girls team did go to the national championship and won, and then went on to represent Canada at the world championship, after an anonymous donor paid the travel expenses.

Little League Canada has denied any discrimination against the girls softball team based on their sexes.

But the tribunal ruled the league’s tournament policy never resulted in boys baseball teams being excluded from getting travel funds.

“Little League’s conduct showed disregard for the impact the [tournament] policy might have had on female softball players,” the ruling said.

“The above-noted conduct supports an inference that sex was a factor in Little League’s adoption of the policy that adversely affected only females and with respect to this complaint adversely affected the [Beacon Hill] team.”

Besides awarding $1,000 each to the girls team’s 13 members, the tribunal also ordered that Little League cease the discriminatory practice and refrain from undertaking any similar courses of action in the future.