In a majority decision, the Supreme Court of Oklahoma has ruled that the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) exceeded his power when he required a high school baseball team to forfeit a game after it exceeded the association’s 22-game limit for the regular season.
At the same time, the majority concluded that the school circumvented the requirement to appeal the executive director’s decision to the OSSAA’s Board of Directors before going to the courts.
While the decision is moot for the Wright City Public School varsity baseball team (the state tournament was played before the appeal could be decided), the court did require a rehearing of the arguments before the aforementioned Board of Directors.
The problem surfaced after Wright City’s varsity baseball team won the district and the regional tournaments, qualifying for the eight-team, single-elimination Class A state championship tournament. The state tournament was scheduled for May 2 and 3, 2013.
On April 22, 2013, after winning the district tournament, the Wright City coach scheduled a five-inning practice game with a local junior varsity team. Then on April 29, 2013, after winning the regional tournament, the Wright coach scheduled a five-inning practice game with another high school.
Shortly after the last game, the OSSAA received an anonymous telephone call suggesting that Wright City exceeded the 22-game limit rule. When confronted, the coach explained that he thought the 22-game limit applied to regular season play, but did not apply to post-season play, according to the court.
In considering what to do, the OSSAA relied on the fact that four schools had violated the softball game-limit rule in the fall of 2012 and were given forfeiture penalties, which eliminated two of the schools from the state championship tournament and placed the other two schools in the loser bracket. The association sent out a letter with the following penalty:
“Generally when a team has participated in more contests than permitted under the rules and regulations for that sport, the team is required to forfeit or sit out of an equal number of contests after the violation has been discovered. In this instance, Wright City is required to forfeit its next game, which is the first round of the state championship tournament. This forfeit will eliminate the team from the state tournament and completes the baseball season for the team. Because Wright City played in a second game in excess of the limitation, the team also will be limited next year to 21 match games and three tournaments in spring baseball, in addition to any state championship playoff games. The school further will be placed on warning for one year, meaning that the discovery of any other rule violations during the next year could result in the imposition of additional sanctions and penalties.”
By letter dated May 1, 2013, the Wright City Board of Education and Superintendent requested a reconsideration of the executive director’s April 30th forfeiture penalty.
“The request asserted that the coach has taken full responsibility and is remorseful for his mistake, and it asked that the penalty be revised to suspending the coach and forfeiting the opportunity to host a district or regional tournament in 2014 under the ‘precedence set in similar situations last spring at Guthrie and Sand Springs,’” wrote the court.
They further asked the association to use the Guthrie situation as a guide:
“Last Spring the Guthrie baseball team violated the amount of games played. It states in that article that team would be allowed to continue in the playoffs but without their head coach. They were forced to forfeit their last game that would have been the 23rd scheduled game. Forfeiting a district game should have prevented the team from playing in the post season, but OSSAA changed their ruling in favor of the kids to allow them to participate in the playoffs. They removed the probationary status and placed the school on warning status for one calendar year.”
On May 1, 2013, the same day that Wright City’s superintendent, school board and coach submitted their requests for reconsideration, the school board sought injunctive relief in the district court to allow Wright City to participate in the first round of the tournament on May 2, 2013. The petition alleged that OSSAA’s refusal to allow Wright City to participate in the state tournament was arbitrary and capricious and that OSSAA violated its own due process rules and procedures.
The district court responded by entering an ex parte temporary restraining order against OSSAA. The restraining order found that Wright City would be irreparably harmed on and after May 2, 2013, if the team is not allowed to participate in the state tournament and the harm cannot be repaired by money damages.
At the hearing on the temporary injunction on May 3, 2013, the Executive Director testified extensively about the Guthrie situations. “In summary,” wrote the court, “he testified that in the Guthrie situation the coach for the varsity spring baseball team scheduled 23 games; Guthrie brought their junior varsity team to play the 23rd game scheduled against El Reno and asked that it be counted as a junior varsity game; El Reno refused to count the game as a junior varsity game; Guthrie forfeited the game and was automatically placed on probation status; and Guthrie self-imposed penalties. The Executive Director determined that Guthrie did not exceed the game limit because they played their junior varsity team and moved Guthrie from probation status to warning status allowing Guthrie to play in the tournament.”
At the conclusion of the evidentiary hearing, the trial judge granted a temporary injunction. The trial judge found that: “1) Wright City would be irreparably harmed if the injunction is denied; 2) the forfeit would affect other teams regarding pitching; 3) all decisions presented by defendant involved matters in which there were specific penalties; 4) there is no penalty for Wright City’s violation so OSSAA’s decision in this matter is arbitrary; and 5) the rules do not provide for a general penalty. OSSAA appealed. We retained and expedited the appeal.”
Upon review, the high court noted that the OSSAA “may enforce its published rules, regulations, and policies without undue interference by the courts. Morgan v. Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, 2009 OK 21, ¶;17, 207 P.3d 362, 365. However, the courts will intervene to assure the OSSAA proceedings are conducted pursuant to its constitution, rules, regulations, and policies in good faith:
“We may not interject ourselves in the Association’s internal affairs if the rules are reasonable, lawful, in keeping with public policy, and are interpreted fairly and reasonably and enforced uniformly and not arbitrary. Brown v. Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, 2005 OK 88, ¶;10, 125 P.3d 1219, 1224.
“Although we leave its internal affairs to the OSSAA, this Court has recognized that the power to exercise discretion might be harmful to the OSSAA because the potential for arbitrary decisions comes with the power to exercise discretion. Mahan v. Agee, 1982 OK 116, ¶;19, 652 P.2d 765, 768.”
The OSSAA argued on appeal that the trial judge’s temporary injunction “is grounded in an erroneous proposition that enforcing a rule that has no specified penalty is inherently arbitrary.”
Wright City argued that “the OSSAA seeks to punish Wright City for violation of a rule without a defined penalty and that OSSAA’s reserving for itself total discretion to fashion an appropriate penalty is, on its face, arbitrary and capricious.”
The high court wrote that the mission of OSSAA “is to provide equitable participation opportunities to high school students, and the executive director has no authority to short circuit a student’s participation opportunities. The executive director has the responsibility to impartially investigate alleged rule violations but he has no power to interpret the rules or to impose penalties in a manner that denies a school the right to meet with the investigator of an alleged rule violation or the right to a hearing before the board of directors as provided in the OSSAA Constitution. In this case, that is precisely what the Executive Director did. He decided against Wright City on the allegation of rule violation and imposed a future-game forfeiture which was outside the penalties allowed by OSSAA policies. Then in violation of the trial judge’s ex parte temporary restraining order, he allowed the first day of state tournament playoffs with only seven teams to move forward. Further, the executive director did not treat Wright City’s requests for reconsideration as either 1) a request for a meeting with the investigator prior to a decision on the allegation of a rule violation which he should have afforded even without a request before making a decision or 2) an appeal to the board of directors. The practical effect of the executive director’s conduct is that the forfeiture penalty became permanent without compliance with the due process procedures prescribed in OSSAA’s Constitution. We hold the executive director’s decision that Wright City violated the 22-game rule and the forfeiture penalty are arbitrary and without force or effect.
“The trial court had an obligatory duty to assure that Wright City was complaining of injury caused by the OSSAA Board of Directors’ action. It erroneously did not. Courts review actions by the OSSAA members and board of directors. The decision on the issue of whether Wright City violated the 22-game rule must be made by the OSSAA Board of Directors. The controlling effect of reasonable OSSAA rules and the board of directors’ reasonable interpretation of its rules and constitution has long been recognized by this court.
“Wright City’s petition for injunctive relief complained that the OSSAA denied Wright City its right to due process, however neither party informed the trial judge that the OSSAA Board of Directors had not taken any action. Neither party nor the trial judge looked to the OSSAA Constitution to determine the propriety of the executive director’s actions. Here, the OSSAA has acted only through the executive director. There is a complete absence of a showing that the OSSAA Board of Directors has been informed of the allegation made against Wright City, the penalty imposed against Wright City, or the request for reconsideration from Wright City.
“All the players in this controversy have erred: 1) the executive director should not have decided the alleged rule violation with Wright City’s request for reconsideration pending and without allowing Wright City a meeting with the investigator, 2) Wright City should not have sought district court relief before the OSSAA Board of Directors denied it any relief, and, 3) the district court should not have entertained the petition for injunctive relief before it had proof that the OSSAA Board of Directors refused to rule on the alleged rule violation and refused to extend the baseball season to allow Wright City to exercise its rights under the due process procedure in the OSSAA Constitution. We emphasize that Wright City should not have gone to the district court before going to the OSSAA Board of Directors.
“Accordingly, we dissolve the district court’s temporary injunction and remand the cause to the district court with directions to stay this proceeding until Wright City has an opportunity to challenge the allegations of rule violation before the OSSAA Board of Directors pursuant to OSSAA’s Constitution, Article IV, Section 6.”
Wright City Public Schools and Wright City Board Of Education v. Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association; S. Ct. Okla.; Case Number: 111729, 2013 OK 35; 2013 Okla. LEXIS 41; 5/31/13
Attorneys of Record: (for appellee) Kevin T. Sain, Idabel, Oklahoma, and Mark E. Fields, McAlester, Okla.; (for appellant) Mark S. Grossman, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
