Christopher Pellerito points to this article detailing a Michigan federal district judge’s ruling that the MHSAA, the governing body for high school sports in Michigan, discriminates against female athletes by virtue of its scheduling practices. Apparently, the Michigan High School Athletic Association transposes girl’s volleyball and basketball seasons (between fall and winter), and the two lawyers from near Grand Rapids who brought the suit allege that this format denies girls scholarship opportunities. Not only must college recruiters visit them out of season, the argument goes, but because Michigan girls are busy playing the regular season while some regional and national camps and tournaments are taking place, these players are at a disadvantage with regards to being scouted and recruited by universities — and thus, their rights are being violated under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, which mandates equal accommodation for women.

Here’s Christopher’s take on the ruling:

[E]ven if it could be proven that Michigan girls were not getting as many college basketball scholarships, it would still be a lame lawsuit. Only a tiny fraction of the ladies who play high school basketball will ever play in a Division I college program. Why do the needs of this subset of the girls’ basketball population trump the demands of everyone else, including those who are actually footing the bill? Boys and girls have the same opportunity to play high school basketball in Michigan, period […]

[…] Moreover, by offsetting the boys’ and girls’ schedules, this alleviates the needs for gym capacity, and requires fewer trained referees and other personnel, which in turn frees up athletic department budgets for things like, oh, say, girls’ sports. Many schools in Michigan will not be able to accommodate simultaneous boys’ and girls’ basketball, which will force athletic departments to pay to use other venues, etc.

It seems likely that the judge’s decision will get ripped to shreds by the court of appeals. But this lifetime-tenured judge is potentially messing with the lives of hundreds of thousands of high school athletes in Michigan, in the name of some hollow pursuit of gender equity.

Let’s hope Christopher’s right and the judge’s decision gets overturned. Discrimination decisions like this one weaken the credibility of the term “discrimination”; and we all know what happened to the “person” who cried wolf…

—–