The Wisconsin Court of Appeals (District II) has ruled in favor of Hayden Halter, a high school wrestler, in his case against the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA). In February of 2019, Halter was suspended by the WIAA for two unsportsmanlike conduct violations issued to him during a wrestling meet. The Association’s rules then in effect specified that Halter would be suspended from the “next competitive event.”

Halter and the WIAA disagreed about which competition would constitute the “next competitive event” and Halter commenced a civil action to enjoin the WIAA from holding him out of postseason competition. The circuit court issued a temporary restraining order (which allowed him to compete in postseason competition and go on to win an individual state title) but ultimately ruled in favor of the WIAA after a trial. Halter appealed the circuit court’s ruling. In deciding Halter’s appeal, the court of appeals came to two critically important conclusions:

1. The WIAA is a state actor under the Supreme Court’s Brentwood standard

Shockingly, this has not been decided by any state or federal court since the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision outlining the substantial entwinement test. The WIAA has strategically stipulated, settled, or intentionally not challenged state action assertions in previous cases, while attempting to win on other grounds. It has largely been successful in those efforts. This litigation strategy has likely been utilized by the WIAA to create more hurdles for athletes and schools in future cases. Factually, there are no meaningful distinctions between the WIAA and TSSAA from the Brentwood case. The percentage of public-school members and employees sitting on the Board of Control of the WIAA—the most important factors in determining substantial entwinement—are nearly identical to the TSSAA. The WIAA simply did not have any adverse precedent that plaintiffs could point to, up until now.

2. The Association acted arbitrarily in interpreting and applying its Rules of Eligibility as it did

The law of private/voluntary associations is widely accepted, but infrequently utilized by courts. As a result, no Wisconsin court had previously applied the law in the athletics context. Looking to other state and federal courts, which have held that the rule applies to high school athletics associations, the court of appeals applied the standard to the WIAA. It held that a private association cannot act arbitrarily or unreasonably in applying its own rules. Analyzing the facts of this case, the court found that the WIAA had. 

Specifically, the court of appeals found that the Association had acted arbitrarily by creating additional, unwritten requirements in interpreting the “next competitive event” rule. By interpreting the rule to mean the next competitive varsity event, when the text of the rule made no reference to level of competition, the WIAA acted unreasonably and exercised “its will not its judgment.” Moreover, the court found that it arbitrarily refused to allow Halter to appeal his suspension to the Board of Control, again failing to follow the written text of its rules. 

The WIAA has petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court for review of the case, arguing that the court of appeals erred in determining that it is a state actor and by failing to afford it a “presumption of correctness and validity in decisions” that it makes relating to the athletes it governs. In Halter’s response to the petition, he argued that the court of appeals interpreted the law and applied it to the facts of the case correctly, and that the Wisconsin Supreme Court need not intervene. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision to grant review is currently pending.