Do Colleges Need “Pregnant Athlete” Policies?

For anyone with an interest in college athletics, Amy Rainey’s “What Athletes Can Expect When They’re Expecting: Many colleges are ill prepared for pregnant athletes—and some players suffer as a result,” in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education (May 26, 2006) is worth a read.

The story highlights the potential legal exposure for schools that don’t have pregnancy policies for athletes. One story is that of Tara Brady, a student at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut, who sued her former basketball coach for discrimination, claiming that she was told to “go home . . . because her pregnancy would be a ‘distraction’ to the team.” As Rainey’s article reports: “According to the lawsuit, Ms. Brady had requested a ‘medical redshirt,’ a status like that given to injured athletes, to allow her an additional year of eligibility. But she claimed that her coach never redshirted her, and that the university revoked her scholarship.” The University settled with Ms. Brady for an unspecified sum. This type of claim is likely the most common schools without pregnancy policies would face – but the article hints at what could be an even more disastrous result for a university (from a damages perspective): pregnant athletes who are unaware of the effect their status will have on their scholarships who as a result hide their pregnancies (and fail to seek prenatal care), or seek abortions.

Elizabeth Sorenson, Faculty Athletics Representative (FAR) at Wright State University in Dayton, has proposed the NCAA develop a pregnancy policy. Professor Sorenson hosted an on-line discussion on the issue yesterday, which can be found here. In a nutshell the WSU policy calls on athletes to notify their coaches of pregnancy status, to refrain from withdrawing from their sport, and establishes a support group to counsel a pregnant athlete and oversee continued participation (I’ve e-mailed Professor Sorenson for a copy of the policy and will update this post once I’ve had a chance to look at it). The NCAA has not acted on her proposal, according to the Chronicle.

Such a policy seems like a good short term legal strategy to avoid potential liabilities. In the long run, however, might adopting a “maternity-leave”-like policy for pregnant college athletes start to make it difficult to argue that the “economic realities” of college athletics are not those of an employer-employee relationship? As a result, might college athletes be able to demand the right to unionize, and / or get paid? Of course, that might be a good thing, as Greg argues here.

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