The Ypsilanti Courier
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
MHSAA files paperwork with Supreme Court
If no decision made by June 1, schedules will stay the same
By Joe Slezak, Heritage Newspapers
PUBLISHED: March 1, 2007
The Michigan High School Athletic Association is taking the gender equity lawsuit against it back to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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On Jan. 29, the MHSAA filed paperwork with the Supreme Court to appeal a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Communities for Equity, a Grand Rapids-based group that filed a lawsuit in 1998, alleging that the MHSAA discriminates against girls because basketball is a fall sport and volleyball is a winter sport. It's the opposite on the collegiate level and in 47 states.
The filing opened a 60-day window for Communities for Equity to file a response. John Johnson, the MHSAA's communications director, said that the association expects the justices to discuss the case in late April and let both sides know by mid-May if it will hear the case.
Both sides have agreed that if they don't have word from the court by June 1, the sports will remain in their current seasons for the 2007-08 school year, Johnson said.
Before then, if the Supreme Court declines to hear the case, six sports will change seasons next school year: girls' basketball from fall to winter; volleyball from winter to fall; boys' golf and girls' tennis from fall to spring; and girls' golf and boys' tennis from spring to fall.
In 2004, three 6th U.S. Circuit judges ruled unanimously that the MHSAA was violating the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. After an MHSAA request for an en banc hearing before all 13th 6th Circuit judges was denied, the association appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 2005, the Supreme Court remanded the case back to the 6th Circuit, saying that the decision should have been based on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which guarantees equal opportunities for both genders.
In August, three 6th Circuit judges ruled 2-1 that the MHSAA is violating Title IX, the equal protection clause and Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. The dissenting judge said it only was a Title IX case. In December, another en banc hearing request from the association was denied.
The MHSAA has drafted two sets of tournament schedules for 2007-08.
If it loses the case, the volleyball state finals will be Nov. 17, the day of one of the state's most popular sporting events, the annual football game between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University.
The girls' basketball tournament would start and finish one week ahead of the boys' basketball tournament. The girls' finals would be on March 8, 2008; the boys' finals would be on March 15. Opposite-gender games would not be held on the same nights on the two overlapping tournament weeks.
The girls' start of practice and regular season also would start one week ahead of the boys.
The only other state that doesn't play girls' basketball in the winter is Hawaii, where it is a spring sport. Volleyball is not a sanctioned sport in Vermont.
The MHSAA has 760 member schools in 2006-07; 25 are Downriver.
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