New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association
The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) is the governing body for high school sports. Founded in 1918, it describes itself as "a voluntary, non-profit organization made up of 425 accredited public, private and parochial high schools in the state."[1]
Under a clarification for its rules for Eligibility, it prohibits home-schooled athletes as follows:
- Section 1. A student, to be eligible for participation in the interscholastic athletic program of a member school, must be enrolled in that school and must meet all the eligibility requirements of the Constitution, Bylaws, and Rules and Regulations, of the NJSIAA.
- CL Students being home-schooled (by parents or other parties) are not eligible because they are not enrolled. Properly enrolled students on Home Instruction provided by the Board of Education are eligible if the student satisfies CL 4 of Section 4.E. (emphasis added)
Note that this "clarification" imposes a limitation on a member school as to who may participate on its own team, even if the opposing team consents to the participation. It is not clear from the NJSIAA who inserted this clarification, or when.
In a brilliant law review article entitled Legal Precedents and Strategies Shaping Home Schooled Students' Participation in Public School Sports, Kathryn Gardner and Allison McFarland outline several ways for homeschoolers to overcome barriers to compete on high school sports teams:
1. Pass legislation to allow homeschoolers to compete, or to give local school boards the power to allow them to compete.
2. File a lawsuit based on the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
3. File a lawsuit based on state constitutions.
There is a fourth approach overlooked by the law review article:
4. Sue the school association that is prohibiting participation by homeschool athletes under antitrust law. Specifically, sue for an unlawful refusal to deal with homeschool athletes. This approach is explored more fully at School sports and antitrust.
And then there is this approach:
5. Appeal to the state Department of Education and hope for a sympathetic administrator.
Sources: