USWNT players livid, have personal info redacted from lawsuit

U.S. women's players had their email addresses and home addresses published in the public court documents.

At the end of U.S. Soccer's lawsuit against the U.S. women's national team players union, some incredibly personal information was published, and U.S. players are not happy about it.

The documents in the lawsuit over the current labor dispute, published Wednesday, included the personal email addresses of a number of national team players, such as Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Hope Solo, Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn, and the personal home addresses of 28 players total. They've since been redacted, but not before the damage has been done.

The revelation sparked outrage among the players, with Megan Rapinoe telling the New York Times, "The players are very, very upset. We feel disrespected. We feel that our personal information, our privacy and our safety was handled frivolously and with real negligence. I doubt it was purposeful, but it’s an egregious error, and one that’s unacceptable."

• PODCAST: U.S. Soccer lawsuit; Interview with Christian Pulisic

The lawsuit centers around U.S. Soccer believing that the players are still operating under the terms of the most recent collective bargaining agreement, which expired in 2012 but remained in effect after the signing of a memorandum of understanding. The players' side is arguing that is not the case and they are not. U.S. Soccer alleges that the players union has threatened to strike later this month, though the players' representative says that is untrue.

“There were no threats issued," union executive director Rich Nichols told SI's Grant Wahl. "What we did was, I did indicate that we were going to reserve all our legal rights as anyone would do in a situation like this … And I can’t get in their heads, but I guess they interpreted that as being some threat. We don’t issue threats, and my communications are usually quite clear.”