Federal Judge Considers Whether a High School Athlete Has a Constitutional Right to Play

By Anna Giambelluca, Esq. Every year, high school athletic associations across the nation make eligibility decisions that end athletic careers, redirect futures, and are rarely challenged. The long-held assumption is that playing high school sports is a privilege, not a protected right, and therefore can be taken away without explanation. For forty years, the courts agreed with that assumption. Then Zavior Ward, a senior at Hawaii Baptist Academy, was stripped of his eligibility for water polo,