ncaa stay of enforcement on appeal

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

NCAA Granted Stay In SAT Eligibility Case--(March 31, 1999)

The Associated Press is reporting that a federal appeals court has put on hold a judge's ruling that the NCAA said threatened to cause recruiting "chaos" among its Division I schools. A three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decided on Tuesday to allow the NCAA more time to develop new freshman eligibility requirements after a lower court struck down the use of minimum test scores to determine eligibility.

The appeals court decision to grant the NCAA a stay of the lower court ruling puts the old eligibility requirements listed under Proposition 16 temporarily back in place while the NCAA appeals, but does not overrule the lower court's decision. Now Prop 16 opponents hope NCAA officials don't interpret the stay as a permanent timeout from forming new eligibility guidelines. NCAA lawyers had said the ruling would cause "chaos" and "irreperable harm" to the 302 Division I schools affected by the ruling.

"The NCAA knows this is a bad rule. One would hope they use the time they say they need" to develop new rules, said Andre Dennis, lead lawyer for the four black plaintiffs who filed the suit. U.S. District Judge Ronald Buckwalter struck down Prop 16 on March 8, ruling that minimum test score requirements have an "unjustified disparate impact on African-Americans."

"My concern is that (the NCAA) will become complacent and allow the discriminatory effect to continue," Dennis said. The NCAA, college athletics' national governing body, said it needed a stay so as to have time to write replacement eligibility rules and file appeals. NCAA lawyer David Bruton argued in court Tuesday that there was "considerable confusion" among Division I schools. "There has been no alternative proposed that would achieve the level of success" that Prop 16 had achieved in setting academic requirements, Bruton said.

Opponents called on the NCAA to adopt a nondiscriminatory eligibility policy rather than fight to delay or overturn the court's decision. The athletes involved have either long since reached or are close to the end of their freshman year of eligibility. "At best, this is an administrative inconvenience," Dennis said Tuesday in chiding the NCAA's arguments. "They're basically saying '3rd Circuit, save us from ourselves' because no one is forcing these people to be let in," Dennis said. Buckwalter on March 17 declined to give the NCAA the extra time, but the appeals court granted the stay pending the NCAA's appeal. The judge's initial ruling did not completely rule out some use of the tests, which many educators have long said are racially and culturally discriminatory.

So the answer in recruiting for everyone, at least for the moment, is that the SAT is still very much alive.