Girl Scouts accuse Boy Scouts of unfair competition in lawsuit
The recruiting pitches are strikingly familiar: Character-building and leadership opportunities for girls await in time-honored scouting programs.
But in a filing in federal court last week, the Girl Scouts of the USA said this was not its recruitment message, but that of a rival organization — the Boy Scouts of America — that it accused of engaging in unfair competition and trademark infringement.
Thefilingbythe Girl Scouts on Christmas Eve inU.S. DistrictCourt inManhattanwas the latest salvo in a legal and publicrelationsfeudbetween the two organizations, one that was set in motion after the Boy Scouts’ announcement in October 2017 that it would broadly accept girls to its programs.
The filing said the Boy Scouts had removed gender-specific language from some of its marketing materials that solely referred to scouts and scouting, a violation of a congressional charter that governs the organization.
The filing, whichwas part of a lawsuit filed by the Girl Scouts in 2018, also said that the “ScoutMe In” recruiting campaign of the Boy Scouts featured girls in advertisements. SomelocalBoyScouts groups used the phrase “Girl Scouting,” the filing said, further infringingonlong-standing trademarks granted tothe Girl Scouts by Congress. The Girl Scouts called the overtures “highly damaging.”
“For the last century, the Girl Scouts trademark has become understood to designate the source of scouting services for girls,” the filing said. “Now, because of
what Boy Scouts has done, that distinctiveness is being slowly eroded, and the law affords Girl Scouts a remedy to stop such a further loss of distinctiveness.”
The Boy Scouts of America denied engaging indeceptive marketing to boost its enrollment of girls, saying in a statement Sunday that young people and their families were attracted to the organization for a variety of reasons, including love of outdoor adventure, personal connections to programsandthe goal of becoming an Eagle Scout.
“Toimply that confusion is a prevailing reason for their choice is not only inaccurate — with no legally admissible instanceofthisofferedtodate in the case,” the Boy Scouts said, “but it is also dismissive of the decisions of more than 120,000girlsandyoung womenwhohave joinedCub Scouts or Scouts BSA since the programs became available to them.”
The decision by the Boy Scouts organization to accept girls cameas itsmembership dwindled in recent decades. In 2017, the organization said that it had 2.3 million members ages 7-21 and nearly a million volunteers throughout the United States and its territories. Thatwas less than half the estimated 5 million membersthattheBoyScouts, incorporated in 1910, had at its peak in the 1970s. Earlier this year, the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy protection.
The shift in membership guidelines immediately caused tensions between the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, with one Girl Scouts national executive saying that the organizationwas “blindsided” by theannouncement and that girls thrivedinall-female groups.
A little more than a year later, the Girl Scouts sued the Boy Scouts in federal court inManhattan for trademark infringement, dilution, unfair
competition, tortious interference with prospective economic advantage and deceptive business practices. In the lawsuit, the Girl Scouts said parents had mistakenly signed girls up for new programs offered by the Boy Scouts instead of for Girl Scouts programs.
TheBoyScoutshavesought to have the lawsuit dismissed and said it lacked merit.
In its statement Sunday, the Boy Scouts said it had decided to accept girls into its programs after years of receiving requests fromfamilieswhowantedthe option of character-development and leadership programs run by the organization.
“We applaudevery organization that builds character and leadership in children, including the Girl Scouts of the USA, and believe that all families and communities benefit from the opportunity to select the programs that best fit their needs,” the Boy Scouts said.