Youth sports are being held hostage in St. Louis County, Missouri, and the Thomas More Society is holding county officials accountable for their constitutional misdeeds. A demand letter issued September 29, 2020, to St. Louis County Executive Sam Page and St. Louis County Department of Public Health Acting Director Dr. Emily Doucette was sent on behalf of private and religious school families.

The missive asks for an immediate revocation of the county’s Youth Sports Guidelines along with the Third Amended Order for Business and Individual Guidelines for Social Distancing and Re-Opening, dated July 29, 2020, effective July 31, 2020. Refusal to do so will result in legal action seeking an injunction against the county.

“St. Louis County has placed irrational, arbitrary, and unconstitutional strictures on the freedom of association of its own residents, to the harm of all and especially high school athletes,” stated Thomas More Society Special Counsel Mary Elizabeth Coleman. “Ideally, St. Louis County will realize that these guidelines and order exceed the bounds of their authority. If they do not, we are prepared to pursue litigation to vindicate the legal rights of county residents against this overreaching abuse of civic authority.”

The families being represented by the not-for-profit national public interest law firm have students attending private or Christian schools located in St. Louis County that require or highly encourage students to participate in sports. The county’s unauthorized efforts to stifle and criminalize school athletics has infringed upon the rights of students at the schools and their parents.

“Many of these families have made significant sacrifices for their children to attend these schools, where their years of training and practices may yield a chance to obtain collegiate athletic scholarships,” explained Coleman.

“Some of these students are in their final years of high school and would be actively recruited if they were playing. Accordingly, their opportunities to attend college are being hindered by their inability to play during the 2020 season." Coleman added, "These students would be playing these sports, as is the wish of their parents, but for the ever changing, indefinite, arbitrary, and capricious guidelines issued by the County Executive office purporting to regulate high school athletics.”

The demand letter states the core complaint:

“These ‘guidelines’ present themselves as laws, dizzying in number, written by a single person, Medical Director Doucette, and purporting to invoke the full force of criminal and civil penalties. Director Doucette lacks legal authority to enact these orders and bases her ability to do so on misinterpretations and misstatements of state and local laws that in turn violate the Missouri and federal constitutions. Even if the Medical Director of St. Louis County had the authority to enact unilaterally laws masquerading as guidelines, the restrictions imposed by Director Doucette are so arbitrary and capricious that they violate the federal constitution.”

Coleman emphasized the chief error of the county-issued guidelines: “They wrongly purport to enable the St. Louis County Counselor to seek injunctions, enforce these restrictions, and seek criminal penalties. Authorizing the county counselor to be judge, jury, and jailer is far beyond the provisions of the state constitution regarding municipal governance.”

Among the unconstitutionally and arbitrarily banned activities:

*Parents are banned from congregating in parking lots – which carries associated criminal penalties
*A criminally punishable ban on spectators indoors regardless of gym size
*Unreasonable restrictions on outdoor spectators (permitting only two spectators per athlete)
*A criminally punishable ban on cheerleaders who “chant or stunt”
*A complete ban on competitions in certain sports with no similar ban on scrimmages or practices

“The guidelines do not specify who would arrest the offending child for showing excessive exuberance in their role as cheerleader,” said Coleman, “but the concept is ludicrous.”

Many families attending the private or religious schools in St. Louis County reside in neighboring counties, where children are permitted to play and compete in all sports, including contact sports, at all ages. The public schools in Saint Louis County are attending classes virtually while the private school students are attending class with a variety of scenarios, ranging from fully virtual to full time in-person instruction.

St. Louis County’s ban on high school sports has resulted in disparate treatment of private and public schools. Doucette has threatened to close schools and end live instruction if a school relocates its athletic competitions outside the county, something that several public schools have done, with no penalty or threat of one.

“As a result, these public school athletes are not being denied their 2020 recruitment season,” Coleman commented. “By contrast, the private and Christian high school students are missing out on their recruitment at the hands of St. Louis County’s discriminatory implementation of arbitrarily applied and illogically issued guidelines. These young people all shop at the same stores and eat at the same restaurants, but only those attending public school are receiving the opportunity to be scouted for college athletics. This is unacceptable.”

Read the demand letter issued by the Thomas More Society on behalf of St. Louis County private and Christian school families on September 29, 2020, to St. Louis County Executive Sam Page and St. Louis County Department of Public Health Acting Director Dr. Emily Doucette, view our September 29 Thomas More Society demand letter.