The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts are engaged in a battle for recruitment, with the Girl Scouts accusing the Boy Scouts of poaching potential members.
The girls’ organization says that the Boy Scouts of America, or BSA, have unfairly recruited girls into their ranks, essentially raiding their membership base, amid a declining enrollment in both groups, according to a legal order.
The Boy Scouts have allowed girls to participate in the programs since 2018, “after years of family requests” for boys and girls to undertake and train together and for girls to have the opportunity to become Eagle Scouts – the highest honor awarded by the organization.
But the Girl Scouts say BSA’s new recruiting drive is “very damaging” to its own brand and that the “breach” has caused a wave of confusion among parents who mistakenly registered their daughters for the wrong organization.
Scouts’ dishonor?
In 2018, the Girl Scouts sued BSA for trademark infringement, alleging the boys’ organization had used Girl Scouts imagery and slogans – including the terms and phrases’ scout ‘,’ scouting ‘and’ scout me in ‘in its ads.
“As a result of the Boy Scout violation, parents falsely registered their daughters with Boy Scouts, thinking they were Boy Scouts,” said Boy Scouts’ lawyers, adding that this was not an issue before 2018, when the change took place. made for the first time.
Last month, the Boy Scouts called the suit “completely creditable” and asked a judge to throw it out.
On Christmas Eve, the Girl Scouts filed documents in federal court to challenge the move, saying that BSA wanted to confuse the organizations among recruits.
“Boy Scouts knew for decades that using terms like scouts or scouting would be confusing unless it clearly identified the sponsor of services offered under those brands, but it went ahead and used those terms anyway,” the filing said. Thursday. “The rampant confusion and brand damage to girl scouts was the predicted and intended outcome.”
BSA released a statement in response telling CBS News that young people join the organization for a variety of reasons and typically do not choose it by accident.
To suggest that confusion is a predominant reason for their choice is not only incorrect – no legally permissible example of this has been offered in the case to date – but it is also dismissive of the decisions of more than 120,000 girls and young women who have joined Cub Scouts or BSA Scouts since the programs became available to them, ”the BSA said.