An emergency board meeting has been called by the president of the Florida High School Athletic Association’s board of directors.
Greg Zornes scheduled an emergency meeting for 1 p.m. July 15 to reconsider the association’s decision to pare down the high school sports schedules in April, according to an announcement posted Monday on the association’s Web site.
Meanwhile, Florida Parents for Athletic Equity, a group which has filed a lawsuit against the association, alleging the game cuts violated Title IX and were biased against female student-athletes, has filed for a temporary injunction in hopes of freezing the reductions for the upcoming prep season.
Nancy Hogshead-Makar, one of the lawyers representing the six parents of female student-athletes suing the FHSAA, said a conference call has been scheduled for today in order to set a date for the hearing.
In attempt to lessen operating costs for the state’s athletic departments, the board voted to reduce varsity schedules by 20 percent and subvarsity schedules by 40 percent, with the exclusion of football and cheerleading. Since football drew more than 36,000 boys and cheerleading included a little more than 4,000 girls, FPAE claimed the cuts were discriminatory and violated, along with Title IX, the United States Constitution and Florida state laws.
The board voted to table two possible amendments to the schedule cuts — including doing away with the reductions — during a June meeting and planned to re-visit the matter in September.
Hogshead-Makar and Roger Dearing, the FHSAA’s executive director, spoke after the meeting and decided to try and work out a way to keep the cuts while complying with Title IX and staying out of court. That compromise was never reached, however, and the FPAE filed its lawsuit last Tuesday in a federal court in Jacksonville before filing the injunction, which would freeze the reductions while giving schools enough time to add games to their schedules.
Zornes called the meeting Monday.
“Although the overriding reason for the reduction was to ease the financial burdens on the schools in Florida,” Dearing, who was on vacation last week, said in a statement, “it would not help to turn around and them pay money in legal fees for actions in litigation.”
The FHSAA also begun working with an attorney who has experience dealing with Title IX.
Each year, member schools share the finances accrued by the previous year’s litigation expenses. According to Cristina Alvarez, the FHSAA’s director of media relations and marketing, schools paid $82.50 for legal fees for the 2007-08 season.
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