The Ypsilanti Courier
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Judge rules against MHSAA in lawsuit
By Joe Slezak, Heritage Newspapers
PUBLISHED: April 10, 2008
A year after the Michigan High School Athletic Association lost a nearly nine-year federal court battle, its opponent's legal fees have come due.
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And, the cost to the MHSAA could be more than the organization is worth.
U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen ruled Monday that the MHSAA owes the attorneys for Communities for Equity more than $4.5 million, plus interest.
Diane Madsen, Communities for Equity co-founder, said her understanding is that the bill will be more than $7 million. The interest dates to when the case was filed June 26, 1998.
The Associated Press reported last year that the MHSAA has a net worth of $6 million in investments and real estate.
John Johnson, the MHSAA's communications director, said Wednesday that the association won't comment for seven to 10 days. He also declined to comment on the association's worth.
The MHSAA has 767 member high schools and 812 member middle schools. There are 26 member high schools and 23 member middle schools Downriver.
The MHSAA had purchased two insurance policies for $1 million each for this case, plus has paid attorney Edmund Sikorski of Ann Arbor above that. All told, the MHSAA has spent more than $3 million on attorney fees, Madsen said, pushing the case's total legal bill to more than $10 million.
Jack Roberts, the MHSAA's executive director, said last April that if the association had to spend more than the $2 million in legal costs that he didn't think there would be reductions in services and programming, though there might be slowdowns in growth and improvements.
The MHSAA doesn't charge membership fees; the majority of its money comes from spectator admission fees to its 28 postseason tournaments.
Gibraltar school Supt. Eric Federico, a longtime member of the MHSAA's representative council, said he couldn't comment on specifics of the case. He did say, however, that the council's executive committee will meet this month, and the full 19-member council will meet the first week of May. The council would then give direction to the MHSAA staff.
"The Michigan High School Athletic Association is concerned about that award and was not expecting that," Federico said.
Ypsilanti High School Athletic Director Mike McIntosh said he doesn't see this ruling as bringing an end to the MHSAA.
"I didn't attend a lot of the state meetings regarding this issue but whenever I did attend one all the schools seemed to want to continue to fight this lawsuit," McIntosh said. "There were a lot of surveys about what we should do and how we should move things around. I really believe that Jack Roberts and the MHSAA followed what they thought their members wanted."
He said that it is the right of people who won the lawsuit to sue for expenses and damages but he doesn't see it as something that would bring down high school sports. This was not the first lawsuit brought against the MHSAA.
Belleville High School Athletic Director Rod Fisher said he was waiting for some type of reply or email from the MHSAA regarding this lawsuit. Being a new athletic director he does not have as much knowledge of this issue as former AD Mike Colletta did.
"We will have to wait and see what happens," Fisher said. "That is a lot of money but right now we are just in wait to see pattern."
The more than $7 million would go to several Communities for Equity attorneys, mostly to lead attorney Kristen Galles of Alexandria, Va. Communities for Equity's attorneys have not been paid for 12 years' work.
"I think Judge Enslen understood the complexity of this case," Madsen said. "He felt this was a fair award.
"This is pretty sad, in one respect, that the athletic association spent 10 years fighting the battle. Before the trial, they knew they couldn't win."
She added that it's sad that so much money was spent to defend discrimination.
"We're glad that Judge Enslen recognized the length of the commitment and the complexity of the case," Galles said.
"We've tried for years and years and years to work with the MHSAA. All throughout this entire thing, we've tried to bring people to the table to talk. Unfortunately, this is the only thing to wake them up. There are consequences to our stubbornness. Hopefully, they won't do this any more. They'll stop discriminating and retaliating."
She added that the MHSAA has not approached Communities for Equity about resolving the matter.
Communities for Equity, a grass-roots group based in the Grand Rapids area, filed a lawsuit against the MHSAA on June 26, 1998, saying that the association discriminated against female athletes.
The main reason was that volleyball was a winter sport and girls' basketball was a fall sport. It is the other way around at the collegiate level nationally and in virtually every other state at the high school level. The only exceptions were Hawaii, where girls' basketball was a spring sport (it's now a winter sport), and Vermont, where volleyball is not sanctioned.
Enslen ruled Dec. 17, 2001, that the MHSAA was violating the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.
The MHSAA twice lost appeals to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The first loss resulted in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. After the second loss, the MHSAA appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court. On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court said it would not hear the case.
Statewide girls' basketball went from fall to winter, statewide volleyball went from winter to fall, Lower Peninsula boys' golf and girls' tennis went from fall to spring, Lower Peninsula girls' golf and boys' tennis went from spring to fall, Upper Peninsula boys' soccer went from fall to spring and U.P. girls' soccer went from spring to fall.
Staff Writer Dave Merchant contributed to this article.
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