A San Diego Superior Court judge has 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, being implemented by professional teams and colleagues.
Judge Earl H. Maas III issued a temporary restraining order on Friday afternoon at 4:42 p.m.
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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 in 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 who is a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, was convincing. She confessed that “the transmission rate of the virus in high school sports is equal to or lower than that observed in the studies of the Major League Baseball and the National Football League”, the decision states.
With regard to the irreparable injury to young athletes, Maas decided that “it continued
the ban on competitive sports will cause irreparable damage to the petitioners. “
The ruling comes after two local high school athletes sued California and San Diego County, seeking an order for the government to allow high school sports.
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’ father, Marlon Gardinera, is a football coach at Scripps Ranch High. He said in January that the process was about equal treatment, meaning that if professional and college athletes play, why can’t high school athletes play?
Defendants include Governor Gavin Newsom, the San Diego County Department of Public Health and his public health officer, Dr. Wilma Wooten.
THE STATE HAS ALREADY MADE RESTRICTIONS
Earlier in the day, the state had already made moves to ease restrictions on youth sports at the state level.
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, paving the way for abbreviated spring versions of high school 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.
Almost all of California’s intercholastic, club and community league sports have been on hold since the pandemic began in March, along with adult recreational sports, which are also covered by the new rules. The California Interscholastic Federation, the state’s governing body for high school sports, has moved most of its fall sports in the spring in hopes that students will be able to save some of their season.
But state rules have allowed football, baseball, football and almost all other team sports to resume only after a county emerged from the most restrictive of the four levels of virus regulation, a slow process that threatened to eliminate any spring season.
According to the new rules, the designation of the general level of a county does not matter. The only value used for sports competitions will be the cases per capita. All outdoor sports will be allowed – with safety 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 they would already be able to resume competitions immediately after February 26th. They are practically 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 in a few weeks.
THE COURT’S PROCEEDINGS CONTINUE IN MARCH
The parties involved in Friday’s ruling must return to court on March 5 for a hearing on a preliminary ruling on the same grounds.