Mead football hazing trial starts Monday

Lawsuits filed against the Mead School District by football players at the center of hazing events are heading to trial Monday.

A Spokane County jury will determine financial damages the district, which was found liable in the lawsuits, must compensate Mead High School football players who were hazed three years ago at a football camp at Eastern Washington University.

Several lawsuits were filed in the past two years against the district alleging coaches and district officials failed to protect players and report the assaults, harassment and racial discrimination they believe were leveled against the student -athletes. Four of the five athletes who filed suits are Black.

One of the students and his parents filed a federal lawsuit in March seeking $50 million in damages in a case that also names Eastern Washington University, where the hazing occurred.

Meanwhile, two of the four Black students settled their cases with the school district.

The two lawsuits, filed in 2024, heading to trial this week allege that a group of white upperclassmen targeted three younger Black players at a 2023 Mead football camp at Eastern Washington University. One of them, who is represented in this week's trial, was pinned down inside a dormitory and a masked teammate applied a massage gun to his private areas as others recorded the attack on their phones and the targeted player screamed.

The next night, a then-sophomore whose lawsuit is part of this week's trial, warned the other two Black players and another student-athlete hid the two players in his own room. The sophomore told his teammates the assaults needed to stop and would not disclose the location of the two players who were apparently the next targets of the hazing.

The sophomore was then tackled to the ground as some of his teammates pinned his arms and legs down, pulled his legs apart and held them toward his head as about 15 players yelled, cheered and filmed. A masked player with the massage gun proclaimed the "price must be paid" as "punishment" for not revealing the two other players' location and repeated the assaultive ritual on the sophomore, the lawsuit states.

The cellphone videos of the incident circulated in the Mead community and beyond.

It wasn't until February 2024, or eight months after the assault, that Mead notified the sophomore's parents about the circulating videos.

Misdemeanor fourth-degree assault charges were submitted to the Spokane County Prosecutor's Office for five students involved in the 2023 assaults, but prosecutors did not charge them with assault.

Instead, per state law, they were referred to a diversion program because they had no criminal history and the charge was a gross misdemeanor. A diversion agreement is outside the criminal justice system and may require the defendants to perform community service, counseling and other similar options.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Annette Plese ruled in March that Mead School District failed to protect students from "foreseeable harm," did not follow mandatory reporting laws after receiving numerous reports of sexual harassment and assault and engaged in gender-based discrimination in the case where the sophomore was assaulted after protecting two Black students from the abuse, according to court records.

Plese ruled in May the district is liable for racial discrimination in regards to the other case going to trial.

Three days prior to that ruling, Marcus Sweetser, attorney at Sweetser Law Office in Spokane, who is representing the players and their families at trial, filed a document alleging Mead School District Superintendent Travis Hanson deleted references to "race and racial targeting" from the district's investigation into football player hazing and later told the public "nothing learned during the investigation suggested racial targeting or motivations," according to the court document.

Todd Zeidler, Mead School District spokesman, wrote in an email last month the "allegations are defamatory and damaging."

"This matter is in active litigation, and the District looks forward to presenting the full factual record as this matter proceeds," Zeidler wrote.

Plese is presiding over the trial, which starts Monday with jury selection and is expected to last two weeks.

Sweetser and Zeidler could not be reached for comment Friday.

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This story was originally published June 15, 2026 at 8:14 AM.