08/17/2006

Switch of seasons upheld

MHSAA can ask full appeals court to hear matter

GRAND RAPIDS (AP) — A court ruling on the scheduling of the state's prep athletic seasons will not affect the sports calendar for the 2006-07 school year, the Michigan High School Athletic Association says.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld a lower court's opinion that the schedule discriminates against girls in some sports.

The decision issued Wednesday stemmed from a 1998 federal lawsuit filed against the MHSAA by Diane Madsen and Jay Roberts-Eveland, both Grand Rapids-area mothers of female athletes, in conjunction with their group, Communities for Equity.

After the 6th Circuit released the ruling, the East Lansing-based MHSAA issued a statement saying it "will be studying its options following this decision." It has two weeks to ask the full appeals court to hear the matter.

The organization also said there will be no changes to sport schedules for the approaching school year. That drew criticism from the co-president of the National Women's Law Center.

Even though practice has started for girls basketball and other fall sports, the MHSAA and its 1,800 member schools should take "a serious look" at making at least some schedule changes this year, said Marcia Greenberger, whose Washington-based organization has helped the plaintiffs in the case.

"The burden should be on MHSAA and the schools to justify why things have to remain as they are when they are illegally and unfairly discriminating against female athletes in the state of Michigan," Greenberger said.

Madsen said if the MHSAA appealed again, her group would continue its fight.

"It should be over, but unfortunately it's not," she said. "I'm very confident that sooner or later justice will prevail. It's just a matter of how long it takes and how much money it will cost."

The focus of the lawsuit was the scheduling of high school sports seasons involving girls teams. In particular, girls in Michigan play basketball in the fall and volleyball in the winter, the opposite of collegiate schedules.

Critics say that limits the exposure of Michigan's female prep athletes and may hurt their chances to win sports scholarships, but the MHSAA argues the opposite.

Communities for Equity won its federal lawsuit in December 2001. U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen in Kalamazoo said the scheduling policies violated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the federal Title IX statute and Michigan civil rights law.