A San Diego Superior Court judge blocked county officials from preventing young athletes – including high school students – from participating in youth sports that operate under the same COVID or similar protocols applied by professional and university teams.
Judge Earl H. Maas III issued the temporary restraining order at 4:42 pm on Friday afternoon.
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Maas rejected the defense’s arguments that “since there are fewer professional and university teams, the risks to the community are less 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 the University of California at San Francisco, was compelling. She testified that “the rate of transmission of the virus in high school sports is equal to or less than that observed in the studies of the Major League Baseball and the National Football League,” the decision said.
Regarding the irreparable damage to young athletes, Maas determined that he “continued
prohibition of competitive sports will cause irreparable harm to petitioners. “
The decision was made after two athletes from local high schools sued California and San Diego County, seeking an order requiring the government to allow sports competitions in high schools.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Nicholas Gardinera of Scripps Ranch High School in the San Diego Unified School District and Cameron Woolsey of Mission Hills High School in the San Marcos Unified School District.
Nicholas’s father, Marlon Gardinera, is a football coach at Scripps Ranch High. He said in January that the lawsuit was about equal treatment, that is, if professional and college athletes are playing, why can’t high school athletes play?
Defendants include Governor Gavin Newsom, the state Department of Public Health, San Diego County and his public health officer, Dr. Wilma Wooten.
THE STATE ALREADY HAD RESTRICTIONS
Earlier in the day, the state had already taken steps to loosen 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 by the end of March, which paved the way for shortened spring versions of American football. , field hockey, gymnastics and water polo. Now, however, the TRO issued in San Diego on Friday allows young athletes from San Diego County to start playing immediately.
Nearly all inter-school, club and community league sports in California have been suspended since the pandemic began in March, along with recreational sports for adults that are also covered by the new rules. The California Interscholastic Federation, the state’s high school sports regulator, moved most of the sports from autumn to spring, hoping that students would be able to regain part of their season.
But state rules only allowed football, baseball, football and almost all other team sports to resume after a county passed the state’s most restrictive of the four levels of virus regulations, a slow process that threatened to undermine any season. spring.
According to the new rules, the general designation of a county layer does not matter. The only metrics used for sports competitions will be cases per capita. All outdoor sports will be allowed – with security protocols – once a county reaches a level of 14 cases or less for every 100,000 people.
There are 27 counties that meet this standard and should be able to resume competitions on February 26. They are virtually all in Northern California and include three of the four largest counties in the San Francisco Bay Area – Santa Clara, Alameda and San Francisco – as well as many of the state’s most rural counties.
Another 16 counties, including Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange and Fresno, are expected to meet the standard within a few weeks.
COURT PROCEDURES CONTINUE IN MARCH
The parties involved in Friday’s decision are expected to return to court on March 5 for a hearing on the issuance of a precautionary measure based on the same plea.