ALTOONA  The University of Iowa is leaving itself exposed to legal challenges by continuing to have a pink visitors locker room at Kinnick Stadium, two attorneys told attendees Wednesday during a workshop at the Iowa Governors Conference on LGBTQ Youth.

Jill Gaulding, co-founder of Minnesota-based Gender Justice and a former UI tenure-track faculty member, said the Kinnick locker room is one of a growing number of sports-related traditions that use pink shaming and cognitive bias to deride opponents and try to get in their heads.

The locker room was first painted pink in the 1980s during Hayden Frys run as Hawkeye football coach and later redone in 2005. Gaulding said a hockey club in Duluth, Minn., a minor league baseball team in South Bend, Ind., and now the Bondurant-Farrar High School  using money donated by a family that won a Powerball jackpot  have followed the UIs lead.

Most people understand the pink locker room as a taunt against the other team, calling them a bunch of ladies/girls/sissies/pansies/etc., according to an information sheet Gaulding and Gender Justice law partner Lisa Stratton distributed to the workshop attendees.

Gauldings handout quoted a passage from Frys autobiography where he said pink was a passive color and might put opponents in a passive mood. Also, pink is often found in girls bedrooms, and because of that some consider it a sissy color, according to a quote Gaulding said she took from Frys book.

Gaulding said she believes the university could be subject to a lawsuit if it maintains the pink locker room. The UI receives federal funding and is covered by Title IX and Title VII rules, which prohibit discrimination based on gender.

I do believe it creates legal liability  not necessarily about financial liability. To me, thats never been what this is about, she said. But they could be exposed to a declaratory judgment action where someone would just seek to settle the question legally and have a judge decide once and for all is this OK or not.

UI spokesman Tom Moore did not agree with the Gender Justice attorneys analysis.

While the Office of Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Education determines compliance with Title IX, we believe we are compliant, Moore said. The color was chosen because of the belief that it would have a relaxing and calming effect on the visiting team.

To her knowledge, Gaulding said, theres never been a legal challenge to pink locker rooms. But she said a federal court in Arizona ruled that shaming practices of having male prisoners wear pink underwear was deemed a form of punishment that lacked legal justification.

I think every institution that is using pink or gender as a shaming joke reinforces that idea across the entire culture and that is why it is so harmful, Gaulding said.I certainly do conclude that based on all the things that weve been talking about and what I understand are the civil rights laws that its actually illegal to have a pink locker room because its not OK for a public institution to potentially put out a message that people perceive to be based on a sexist or homophobic slur, she added. Its not OK for them to put up a banner that says its bad to be a girl. Its not OK for them to build a pink locker room that conveys that same idea.