BE plays waiting game in league lawsuit

Bishop England High School, which features the top Class AAA athletic program in the state, is involved in a different type of game these days: a waiting game.
 
Bishop England is part of a group of 12 private and charter schools that filed a civil lawsuit on May 18 against the High School League over eligibility rules.  And it has moved through the court’s system at a snail’s pace.
 
The High School League, which oversees high school athletics for all of the public schools and a handful of private schools in South Carolina, filed a motion on May 27 to dismiss the lawsuit on multiple grounds, including that it was improper to hear the case in Greenville County when the High School League’s offices are in Columbia.
 
The lawsuit has been moved to Columbia.
 
“That’s about it,” Bishop England athletic director Paul Runey said of the lawsuit’s movement through the legal channels. “The judge said time was of the essence and that there were grounds for the lawsuit. The High School League disagreed.”
 
On May 18, Bishop England, Oceanside Collegiate Academy and 11 other schools sued the organization for an amendment it passed during its executive committee meeting in March changing transfer rules for private and charter schools. The plaintiff schools claim the amendment directly targeted them, and the lawsuit claims the
High School League treats public and charter schools differently than “traditional” public schools.
 
In one amendment that would go into effect for the 2020-21 academic year, nearly all students who transfer from a “traditional” public school to a charter or private school would have to sit out a year before they gain eligibility to play any sport sanctioned by the league.
 
The league also ruled students were no longer allowed to transfer to any high school in the state by their freshman year and be immediately eligible to play sports.
 
In the past, students were immediately eligible even if they lived outside that school’s attendance zone. Now, students who transfer must sit out a year.
 
“The next judge will look at how the previous judge ruled, and I think that works in our favor,” Runey said.
 
In past years, eligibility issues involving court cases were usually instigated by the biggest schools in the state, Runey said.
 
“Especially when we had four classes,” he said. “We now have five classes, but when there were four, the 50 biggest schools tried to control all 200 schools. It was 50 versus 150.”

 

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