Montgomery County Circuit Judge J.R. Gaines issued a temporary restraining order late last week against the Alabama High School Athletic Association, preventing the organization from enforcing its transfer rule.
And local attorney Michael Kidd, who filed the complaint that led to the restraining order, said the decision is long overdue.
“To be quite blunt, the Alabama High School Athletic Association has been all over the place with granting exceptions to the transfer rule,” he said.
Kidd’s complaint connects transfers in the Central Alabama area in recent years as part of an arbitrary system that, according to the complaint, “fraudulently and arbitrarily enforce said rule as it favors some member institutions and their athletes over others, with no legitimate purpose or rational basis in its selective enforcement.”
The underaged plaintiff in the suit wanted to transfer from Prattville High to Marbury High to play football and baseball, while Kidd’s suit notes that another student transferred from Prattville Christian Academy to Marbury to join the Bulldogs’ cheerleading squad.
The male must sit out a year, while the female is allowed to compete immediately.
“I quickly realized the transfer rule applies to every sport at the Alabama High School Athletic Association with the exception of one sport,” Kidd said, “and that sport is cheerleading. The Alabama High School Athletic Association has refused to acknowledge cheerleading as an official sanctioned sport. I feel they do that for a number of reasons, but when you trace the history of cheerleading, when the rules were written for the Alabama High School Athletic Association, cheerleading was a sideline-only sport. Cheerleaders do not compete with each other.
“Several years ago, and I don’t know how far back it goes, the Alabama High School Athletic Association decided it would sponsor its own statewide cheer tournament. Now, it’s morphed from just showing up in Birmingham on a weekend to participate to three rounds — a district round, a regional round and a championship round in Birmingham over a four- to six-week period. Now, cheerleaders compete with each other in 25 categories that the Alabama High School Athletic Association awards a champion.”
The AHSAA handbook states that “state cheerleading competition in an activity sanctioned by the AHSAA.”
Because of that, Kidd argues, the Alabama High School Athletic Association has different rules for males and females, a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment as well as Title IX.
“By definition, you can’t have a situation where females are being treated differently from males in varsity athletics without having a justifiable reason for treating them differently,” he said. “And the reason the Alabama High School Athletic Association has given — it’s in their handbook — is because cheer doesn’t compete. Well, they do compete now.
“With a Title IX situation and a constitutional situation of equal protection, I don’t think the appellate courts are going to be able to just kick it back and say go figure it out. This is a different animal. It’s not just a situation where somebody is saying the rule is arbitrarily enforced.”
Another point in Kidd’s argument is one AHSAA officials would clearly admit is changing rapidly throughout the state. Autauga County officials did away with school zones last year, allowing students freedom of choice on school selection. That presents a problem for AHSAA officials who enforce transfer rules based on school zones (and in their absence, bus routes).
“You have decided that you’re going to have free choice in both academics and athletics for all the citizens in Autauga County,” Kidd said of school officials. “How does the athletic association have the power to usurp your authority as a board in setting that policy?”
Kidd’s most effective argument is to simply take past AHSAA rulings regarding transfers, an arbitrary set of decisions over the last several years that is somewhat confusing.
• Kidd has the original paperwork from another transfer of players from a parent at one school, Park Crossing, to another parent at another school, Marbury, in 2018. The incident was probed by AHSAA investigators and, according to Kidd, investigators found no wrongdoing by then-Marbury baseball coach Wade Atchley or the student-athletes, but both the coach and the students were ultimately suspended by AHSAA officials from competition for a year.
• Another transfer of a student-athlete from Holtville to Marbury wasn’t approved by AHSAA officials, Kidd noted, despite a bona fide move from one school zone to the other. A similar transfer at the same time regarding athletes transferring to Gulf Shores High, he observed, was approved.
• A recent decision concerning the transfer of athletes from Marbury High to Autauga Academy, Kidd observed, was not approved by AHSAA officials, then approved by a special meeting of the AHSAA’s Central Board of Control.
“The kids transferring have to be enrolled by June 1,” Kidd noted, “but I don’t think they looked at the details of what ‘enrolled’ means. According to the (AHSAA) handbook, to be enrolled, you have to be there three days. Under their rule, the earliest the transferring kids could be eligible would be three days into this semester and at that time they would be transferring from a member institution to a member institution.”
The students transferred to the former Alabama Independent School Association school to beat the June 1 deadline for new AHSAA member schools, but the AHSAA handbook states “for eligibility purposes a student is normally considered enrolled when the student has attended school and class on the third day.” By that time, Autauga Academy was an AHSAA member and the athletes would have to sit out a year to regain eligibility.
Gaines agreed with Kidd’s complaint and issued a temporary restraining order that prohibits the AHSAA’s transfer rule from being enforced. Under that order, Kidd’s plaintiff would be eligible to compete for Marbury this fall.
“It’s much deeper than that,” Kidd said. “What I hope comes out of this is that it forces the Alabama High School Athletic Association to get away from the transfer rule and to come up with something that is not arbitrary, that is not open to subjective interpretation, that’s consistent across the board but fair.
There’s a genuine concern that we don’t want kids hopping from school to school to school wherever they perceive is a better opportunity to play athletics. I get that. That is a legitimate concern. But you’ve got to also weigh the fact that if we’re going to allow kids to have school choice, that’s got to include athletics as well.”
In the meantime, AHSAA officials may have to craft a new transfer rule to weed out the inconsistencies in the old legislation.
“(The temporary restraining order) strikes down the transfer rule across the state in all sports,” Kidd said. “If we litigate this to its end and ultimately we don’t prevail and (schools) are playing kids under the transfer rule while the temporary restraining rule is in place, (AHSAA officials) can’t make a school go back and forfeit a game where they played a player during that time. They would be in contempt of court.”
And while the next move belongs to the Alabama High School Athletic Association, Kidd believes his complaint will be a difficult obstacle to overcome.
“This is a completely different animal from anything that’s been brought before,” he said. “Everything that I’ve found, as far as the eligibility parts of this, has been litigated previously that it was unfair or arbitrary. The courts didn’t want to get involved. Here, being a Title IX complaint, it’s a whole different argument.
“They’ve got a huge problem. They’ve got to find something that removes the subjectivity from this.”
