A San Diego High Court judge has blocked county officials from preventing young athletes, including high school students, from participating in youth sports that operate under the same or similar COVID protocols that professional and college teams apply.
Judge Earl H. Maas III issued the temporary restraining order at 4:42 a.m. Friday afternoon.
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Maas rejected the defense’s arguments that “because there are fewer professional and collegiate teams, the risks to the community are lower by allowing them to play sports” and that older players are more mature.
Instead, Maas said the evidence provided by Dr. Monica Gandhi, a Harvard-trained doctor and professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, was persuasive. He stated that “the rate of virus transmission in high school sports is equal to or lower than that observed in the studies of the major baseball leagues and the national football league,” the ruling stated.
Regarding the irreparable damage to youth athletes, Maas ruled that “it continued
the ban on competitive sports will cause irreparable harm to petitioners. “
The ruling comes after two local high school athletes sued California and San Diego County, seeking an order forcing the government to allow high school sports competitions.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Nicholas Gardinera of Scripps Ranch High School in San Diego Unified School District and Cameron Woolsey of Mission Hills High School in San Marcos Unified School District.
Nicholas’ father, Marlon Gardinera, is a football coach at Scripps Ranch High. He said in January that the demand was about equal treatment, that is, if professional and college athletes play, why can’t high school athletes play?
Defendants include Governor Gavin Newsom, the San Diego County State Department of Public Health, and its public health officer, Dr. Wilma Wooten.
THE STATE HAD ALREADY LOST THE RESTRICTIONS
Earlier in the day, the state had already taken steps to ease restrictions on youth sports across the state.
California officials announced Friday morning that youth sports competitions could resume next week in parts of California and the vast majority of the state in late March, paving the way for abbreviated versions of spring football from high school, field hockey, gymnastics and water polo. Now, however, the TRO issued Friday in San Diego allows San Diego County youth athletes to start playing immediately.
Nearly all of California’s interscholastic, club and community league sports have been on hold since the pandemic began in March, along with adult recreational sports that are also covered by the new rules. The California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body of state high school sports, moved most sports from fall to spring in hopes that students could save part of their season. .
But state regulations only allowed football, baseball, soccer, and almost every other team sport to resume once a county advanced from the state’s four strictest levels of antivirus regulations, a slow process that threatened to escape the spring seasons.
Under the new rules, the general designation of levels in a county does not matter. The only metric used for sports competitions will be per capita cases. All outdoor sports, with safety protocols, will be allowed when a county reaches a level of 14 cases or less per 100,000 people.
There are 27 counties that meet this standard and could already resume competitions as early as February 26th. They are located in virtually all of northern California and include three of the four largest counties in San Francisco Bay: Santa Clara, Alameda, and San Francisco, as well as many of the state’s more rural counties.
Another 16 counties, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange and Fresno, are expected to meet the standard in a few weeks.
THE COURT PROCEEDINGS CONTINUE IN MARCH
The parties involved in Friday’s ruling are due to return to court on March 5 to have a hearing on the ruling on whether a preliminary instruction should be issued for the same reasons.