By Gary Chester, Senior Writer
The case of a Wisconsin high school wrestler who was sanctioned for unsportsmanlike conduct raised the familiar issue of whether statewide interscholastic athletic associations engage in state action when they enforce a rule. The general rule is that they do not, but an exception exists where there is pervasive entwinement of public institutions and public officials in its composition and workings.
In Halter v. Wis. Interscholastic Ath. Association (“WIAA”), 2024 Wisc. App. LEXIS 170 (WI App. February 28, 2024), the Court of Appeals of Wisconsin determined whether the governing high school sports body was an arm of the state that owed the wrestler due process.
The Facts
Hayden Halter was a talented wrestler who competed at the varsity level for Waterford Union High School where he had won a state title as a freshman in 2018. On February 2, 2019, Halter won his conference championship match at the varsity level, but he received two unsportsmanlike conduct calls. The match was conducted by the defendant,WIAA, the body that governs interscholastic sports in Wisconsin. The WIAA has more than 500 member schools.
Under WIAA rules, an athlete receiving two unsportsmanlike conduct calls in one meet is immediately ejected from that meet. The WIAA Rules of Eligibility also state that “[a] student, disqualified from a contest for flagrant or unsportsmanlike conduct, is suspended from interscholastic competition for no less than the next competitive event (but not less than one complete game or meet).” Thus, Halter was ejected from the meet and suspended from the next competitive event, which was a regional meet on February 9, 2019.
To avoid missing the regional competition, Halter sought to satisfy his suspension by registering for and then sitting out the Badger Invitational, a junior varsity/varsity reserve meet that was scheduled a few days prior to the regional meet. Characterizing Halter’s registration as an attempt to “circumvent” its rules, the WIAA advised Halter’s coach and Waterford’s athletic director that its decision on Halter’s ineligibility for the regionals was final and unappealable.
Two days before the regional meet, Halter and his father filed a lawsuit against the WIAA in state court, as well as a notice of appeal to the WIAA Board of Control. The organization immediately denied the appeal because Halter had failed to immediately appeal at the mat on February 2, which was supposedly a rule. The Halters obtained a temporary restraining order allowing Halter to participate in the regional competition, which he won. Halter ultimately won a second WIAA state title for his weight class.
However, the trial judge ruled for the WIAA following an evidentiary hearing in May 2021. The court found that the WIAA’s interpretation of its rules were consistent with its longstanding policy, did not violate Halter’s procedural or substantive due process rights, and were reasonably applied. Halter was stripped of his 2019 state title and his matches, places, points, and scores from the regionals through the rest of the season.
The Halters appealed, arguing that the WIAA acted in an arbitrary and unreasonable manner in refusing to accept that Halter satisfied his suspension by sitting out the junior varsity/varsity reserve meet based on its rules as written at the time.
The Appeal
The threshold issue before the Wisconsin Court of Appeals was whether the WIAA is a state actor whose actions are subject to judicial review. Public schools are state actors, but voluntary sports associations are state actors only if they meet the criteria set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Association, 531 U.S. 288 (2001). Courts are to determine if the private character of a voluntary sports association has been “overborne by the pervasive entwinement of public institutions and public officials in its composition and workings, and there is no substantial reason to claim unfairness in applying constitutional standards to it.”
The court found that the WIAA is a single-state association to which all Wisconsin public high schools belong, along with some private schools (about 20% of its membership), and that almost all of its officials and board members are public school officials acting in their official capacity. “For all practical purposes,” the court stated, “Wisconsin public high schools have outsourced athletic programming and competitions to WIAA by making that association’s rules and programs their own[.]”
The court next considered the propriety of judicial intervention when a voluntary sports association applies its own rules. Since this was a case of first impression in Wisconsin, the court relied on precedent cases from Indiana and Kentucky. While the general rule is that voluntary associations are entitled to deference, their interpretations of the rules must be reasonable.
The court acknowledged that the Halters were entitled to judicial review because they alleged that the WIAA unfairly and arbitrarily applied its rule against a student who had no voice in the association’s rules or leadership. The court would then consider whether WIAA rules did not adequately provide notice to Halter as to how he could satisfy his suspension, and whether the Board of Control wrongly denied his appeal.
Ultimately, the court found that the WIAA arbitrarily and unreasonably ruled that the “next competitive event” had to be a wrestling meet at the same competitive level as the meet at which the violation occurred. The rules did not state this requirement, but the WIAA imposed it on Halter because it did not believe that missing the Badger Invitational was sufficient punishment for his offense. The court also held that the WIAA further deviated from its own rules by denying Halter a full hearing on appeal, which was arbitrary and unfair.
The WIAA was ordered to declare that Halter had properly served his suspension for unsportsmanlike conduct at the Badger Invitational, and to reinstate his title and points from the 2019 varsity level wrestling regionals and subsequent meets. The court issued a permanent injunction reinstating Halter’s 2019 WIAA Division I state wrestling title.
The Dissent
Judge Lisa Neubauer wrote a detailed dissent emphasizing that the WIAA consistently interpreted its “next competitive event” rule as “the next event consistent with the student-athlete’s competitive history and the event from which the suspension arose.” For Halter, this meant the next varsity match, which was the regional meet. Stressing substance over form, Neubauer recognized the obvious: the WIAA declined to permit Halter to serve the suspension at a junior varsity event because that would have allowed him to avoid the consequence of his unsportsmanlike conduct.
Neubauer stated that the WIAA’s decision was reasonable, and the court should have deferred to the judgment of the voluntary association. Examining the organization’s history, she emphasized that the 1994-95 WIAA yearbook clearly stated that an unsportsmanlike disqualification in the final regular season contest of an individual sport would result in an athlete missing the following schedule meet, even if it were a tournament. In this case, Halter’s next scheduled meet was the regional tournament and not the Badger Invitational.
Neubauer echoed the trial judge’s finding that the only “consequence” that Halter served was doing homework at school while missing a match in which he otherwise would not have participated, concluding that was “no sanction whatsoever.” Neubauer added: [The decision] gave Halter “a suspension of no consequence and permitted him to compete with others who played by the rules. It is also unfair to athletes who have been ejected but who lacked a similar fortuitous opportunity to serve a suspension at an intervening lower-level competition.”
