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Title IX lawsuit could affect FHSAA action

Gaetz A lawsuit filed last week in Jacksonville seeks to halt the Florida High School Athletic Association's recent controversial decision to trim game schedules for most sports by 20 to 40 percent during the next two academic school years.

Attorney Nancy Hogshead- Makar filed suit in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville last week charging the FHSAA's decision constitutes gender discrimination in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the Florida Educational Equity Act.

By a 9-6 margin, the FHSAA Executive Board in April voted to cut team sports schedules with the exception of varsity football and competitive cheerleading by 20 percent and junior varsity schedules by 40 percent. According to the FHSAA, some member schools, mostly in the southern part of Florida, requested the cuts in an effort to save money.

Approximately 36,000 boys compete in varsity football, while only 4,000 girls compete in cheerleading. That disproportionality spurned Hogshead- Makar, a respected college law professor and former Olympic athlete, to file suit on behalf of six parents and their daughters known as Florida Parents for Athletic Equity (FPAE). It challenges the legality of the schedule reduction known as Policy 6.

Landfair "FPAE is pleased that the FHSAA is finally taking gender equity more seriously after we filed our lawsuit in federal court, along with a motion for preliminary injunction and a motion for a temporary restraining order," Hogshead-Makar said in an e-mail to Gulf Breeze News on Monday night.

The FHSAA would not comment on the matter when emailed last week. It has scheduled an emergency July 15 Board of Directors meeting to discuss the matter further.

The Florida Senate has caught wind of the controversy, thanks to Gulf Breeze resident David G. Landfair, whose two daughters play sports at Gulf Breeze High School. Landfair spoke personally with Sen. Don Gaetz about the situation.

"The schedule reductions were going to be disproportionally executed where it would be unfair," said LandfairPresident of the GBHS Softball Booster Club. "The girls' schedule was going to be reduced, and what money was going to be saved?

"My whole beef with the FHSAA is that they never said how much money we were going to save. They just said we're going to have fewer games because it's going to save money. Well, how much money?"

Gaetz, a former chairman of the Florida Education Committee and current ranking member of the committee, sent a letter to FHSAA Executive Director Roger Dearing last week seeking their reasoning

for the cuts.

"The FHSAA is operated and governed by the high schools, school districts and their representatives chosen by coaches and by high schools," Gaetz said. "As a state senator, I don't have any direct authority over the day-to-day decisions of the FHSAA.

"But if I don't get a satisfactory answer, then I will ask the chairman of the Senate Education Committee to hold a hearing and invite the leaders of the state high school athletic association to come before the Florida Senate and explain their actions.

"I would think that the leaders of the FHSAA would not want to have to stand in front of television cameras and in front of the state Senate and explain this action unless they've got some very good reasons for it."

Landfair and Gaetz agree that issues like reducing schedules should be addressed and handled at the local level.

"Who's better to judge that?" Landfair said. "Would it be the FHSAA or maybe the principal, who actually is responsible for paying the bills? At Gulf Breeze High, the booster clubs provide more than ample support to pay the bills, and a reduction in schedules penalizes kids who want to play ball."

Gaetz echoed Landfair.

"If there's going to be any changes in scheduling, it should be a decision made by the people who are actually affected, not by some folks in a building in Gainesville."

Like Hogshead-Makar, Gaetz also is concerned about the Title IX implications.

"I think there certainly could be some Title IX complications associated with across-the-board, arbitrary reductions in competitive athletics," Gaetz said. "That's another reason why the state high school athletic association needs to be very cautious about this issue and be very sure that what they've done does not open them up to legal challenges."

Landfair, a retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col., and an Air Force Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps instructor at Daphne (Ala.) High School, said such decisions potentially diminish students' opportunity to grow and learn.

"Sometimes we forget it's about the kids and that every time they get a chance to compete, they learn, whether they win or lose," Landfair said. "And we hate to lose opportunities to learn."

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A copy of the lawsuit can be found at http://www.filedropper. com/scan7503000.