The timing is impossible to ignore.
On Monday St. Louis-area attorney Thomas DeVore filed a preliminary injunction against the IHSA and Hillsboro School District.
The lawsuit claimed the IHSA’s return-to-play plan, which involves masks and social distancing, will cause “immediate and irreparable harm” to the rights of student-athletes. It also alleges that the rules are “the illegal product of collusion between state agencies, [IHSA Executive Director Craig] Anderson and the IHSA.”
The IHSA released a statement on Tuesday saying that it will “defer to the Illinois Department of Public Health, Illinois State Board of Education and the Governor’s Office on all of its Return To Play Guidelines moving forward.”
This should remove the IHSA as a target of future lawsuits over the re-opening of high school athletics. It likely won’t change any outcomes however. While the varying groups may have disagreed on some details, the IHSA was always unlikely to carry on with anything that the state’s board of education and the governor wasn’t on board with.
“We still believe there is a path to conducting high school athletics in the fall, like the majority of states surrounding Illinois plan to do,” IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson said. “To make that happen, it’s important that we allow IDPH, ISBE and the Governor’s Office to take the lead on ensuring the safest and most consistent protocols.”
Up to this point the IHSA had developed the guidelines and then waited for the IDPH to approve them. Teams are currently conducting limited workouts during Phase 4 of the state’s re-opening guidelines.
“There is an unprecedented level of planning for this school year due to COVID-19, and we have come to understand that there needs to be a greater consistency between the guidelines for returning to learn and returning to interscholastic athletics,” Anderson said. “Some of the recommendations by [the IHSA] and directives from IDPH have come into direct conflict with each other, especially as it relates to the use of masks by student-athletes. As a result, we feel it is important to let IDPH and ISBE provide a consistent direction for our membership moving forward. We will wait on direction from these organizations for further guidance on Return to Play plans for the 2020-21 school year.”
