America’s most acclaimed women’s college soccer coach, Anson Dorrance of the University of North Carolina, suffered a serious legal setback yesterday after a federal appeals court ruled that his penchant for sex-related talk may have amounted to unlawful sexual harassment.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, 8–2, that a goalie for the team from 1996 to 1998, Melissa Jennings, can proceed with her lawsuit claiming that she suffered from listening to the coach’s lewd inquiries about the sex lives of his players.

“The facts, when viewed in the light most favorable to Jennings, show that Dorrance’s persistent, sex-oriented discussions, both in team settings and in private, were degrading and humiliating to his players because they were women. His conduct went far beyond simple teasing and qualified as sexual harassment,” Judge M. Blane Michael wrote for the majority.

The rare ruling of the court’s full bench replaced a decision last year in which a smaller 4th Circuit panel voted, 2–1, that Ms. Jennings’s case was too weak to bring to a jury.

Apart from the legal issues involved, yesterday’s decision is notable for the sheer volume of obscenities it contained. In the majority and concurring opinions, variants of a common vulgar term for sexual intercourse appear a total of 18 times, as the judges quote comments allegedly made by Mr. Dorrance.

By comparison, Judge Paul Niemeyer’s dissenting opinion is more demure. Though he finds the coach’s alleged language not to be legally actionable, Judge Niemeyer used asterisks to sanitize the 14 obscene quotes he chose to include.

Judge Michael’s opinion states that Mr. Dorrance asked one player nearly every day about her sexual activity and “whether she ‘got the guys’ names as they came to the door or … just took a number.'” Another player was asked if she was “going to have sex with the entire lacrosse team,” the majority wrote. The coach also inquired about the sexuality of a player he thought might be a lesbian, asked another about her boyfriend’s genitalia, and spoke of a fantasy about an “Asian threesome” involving some of his players of Asian descent.

An attorney for Mr. Dorrance, Douglas Kingsbery, noted that the posture of the case required the appeals court to accept all of the plaintiff’s allegations as true, although the coach disputes many of the claims. Many former UNC players have filed affidavits that “say these allegations are nonsense,” the lawyer said.

Judge Niemeyer suggested that the majority’s revulsion for Mr. Dorrance’s alleged language prompted the judges to ignore obvious flaws in Ms. Jennings’s case, such as a scarcity of proof that the coach’s conduct had any impact on her athletic or academic performance. “While I agree that the sexual banter during soccer practices was vulgar and inappropriate, both as to Coach Dorrance and the soccer team members, the banter had no effect on whether Jennings played soccer, or indeed whether she wanted to play soccer, at UNC,” Judge Niemeyer wrote. “To the contrary, despite the banter, Jennings deeply desired to be a member of the team. When she was cut for reasons unrelated to sexual banter, she was shocked and profoundly disappointed.”

In a concurring opinion, Judge Roger Gregory said it would be perverse to punish Ms. Jennings for her perseverance. “The dissent concludes that because Jennings did her best to avoid Dorrance and his abuse, but still made the most of her time on the team and as a student at UNC, she has forfeited her cause of action. This implication turns Title IX on its head,” the judge wrote, referring to the federal law against gender discrimination in education.

Judge Niemeyer also said there was no sex discrimination because the coach would have made similar remarks to male students. “Such teasing about a player’s social life is the norm on any collegiate athletic team, whether male or female,” the judge said.

Judge Niemeyer, a former baseball player for Kenyon College, fretted that his colleagues were taking academic civility too far.

A professor of sports law at Florida Coastal School of Law, Nancy Hogshead-Makar, said that rationale could give coaches a free pass to harass players. “The fact they spend all this time together shouldn’t make the conduct excusable,” she said. “The wonderful things people get out of sports are nullified if people are exposed to sexually harassing behavior.”