One of the biggest issues facing high school athletics associations today is the review of cases involving athletes with physical or mental disabilities who want to continue participating in sports in violation of various eligibility rules. These rules, which include red-shirting regulations, age limitations, and restrictions on the number of semesters an athlete can participate in high school athletics, were specifically created to ensure fair competition and protect the health and safety of the athletes.
The reason the issue is so difficult for athletics associations is because the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires organizations to make reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities. Therefore, the line between lawful refusal to extend athletics eligibility requirements and illegal discrimination under the ADA is getting cloudier all the time. A good example of the issues athletics associations face when considering whether to waive certain eligibility rules is Doe v. Rhode Island Interscholastic League, 137 F.4th 34 (2025).
Hardship waiver request
John Doe entered high school in Rhode Island as a freshman in the fall of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed Doe’s high school athletics career, as his school did not offer extracurricular sports that fall for public health reasons. As the pandemic ended, Doe’s athletics career resumed, and he played “abbreviated” seasons of basketball, football and track. The next academic year, 2021-22, Doe transferred to an out-of-state boarding school. In doing so, Doe’s parents elected to enroll him as a freshman, repeating the ninth grade. In his reprised freshman year there, Doe played a sport every season: football in the fall, basketball in the winter and lacrosse in the spring.
While Doe completed the 2021-22 academic year at the boarding school, he struggled socially and academically, earning lower grades than he had at his previous school. Doe also lost a significant amount of weight and began to exhibit symptoms of depression. That summer, Doe was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and other learning disorders. Doe’s parents elected to transfer Doe back to Rhode Island, this time to a different school than the one he attended during the 2020-21 academic year. By this time, Doe had completed his “freshman” year twice, and as a result he began the 2022-23 academic year as a sophomore. He also received an Individual Support Plan and other academic accommodations that fall and played varsity football and basketball that fall and winter, respectively.
In the spring of his junior year, Doe’s parents formally requested an eligibility waiver of the Eight Semesters Rule from the Rhode Island Interscholastic League for his senior year, the 2024-25 academic year. The Eight-Semester Rule limits the duration of students’ eligibility so that once a student enters the ninth grade, that student is limited to eight consecutive semesters of eligibility and automatically becomes ineligible for athletics competition four years from the date of entry into the ninth grade. Under the rule, Doe would be ineligible to play sports during his senior year, as he would have completed his eight consecutive semesters as of the spring of 2024, the end of his junior year. In support of the request, Doe’s parents claimed that waiving the rule would be a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.
After reviewing the medical records Doe submitted, the Waiver Committee issued a decision unanimously denying Doe’s request. The Waiver Committee concluded that the documentation and testimony presented did not establish an academic or athletic hardship to perform a waiver of the rule. Doe appealed the decision to the Principals’ Committee, which unanimously agreed with the Waiver Committee and denied Doe’s request.
‘Reasonable accommodation’
In challenging the RIL committees' denial in court, Doe alleged that the league’s refusal to grant him a waiver of the Eight-Semester Rule, which he asserted was a “reasonable accommodation” for his disability, violated the ADA.
Following a brief discovery period, the district court concluded that the league, as a public entity, was subject to Title II. Next, the district court found Doe’s disability was the but-for cause of his waiver’s denial, since he would have completed his time at the boarding school and played sports through his senior year had he not been suffering from anxiety, depression and ADHD. Finally, finding that a waiver would be a reasonable accommodation under the ADA, the district court granted Doe’s request for a permanent injunction permitting him to play competitive sports in contravention of the rule during his fifth year of high school.
On appeal, the First Circuit Court of Appeals held that for a district court to grant a permanent injunction, Doe must have shown (1) actual success on the merits of his claim; (2) that he would be irreparably injured in the absence of injunctive relief; (3) that the harm Doe suffered from the league’s refusal to waive its rule would exceed the harm to the league from the injunction; and (4) that the public interest would not be adversely affected by an injunction.
The league argued that Doe failed to show that he could actually succeed on the merits of his claim. To bring a reasonable accommodation claim under the ADA, the First Circuit held that Doe would need to establish (1) that he is a qualified individual with a disability; (2) that he was either excluded from participation in or denied the benefits of some public entity’s services, programs or activities, or was otherwise discriminated against; and (3) that such exclusion, denial of benefits or discrimination was by reason of the plaintiff’s disability.
But-for cause
While the court found that Doe was a “qualified individual with a disability, it held that the key question was whether his disability was the cause-in-fact, or but-for cause, of his exclusion. The First Circuit rejected the district court’s finding that there was a causal connection between Doe’s disability and his inability to meet the requirements of the Eight-Semester Rule. The First Circuit held that the League’s decision to deny Doe’s waiver request was not because of his disability, but because he voluntarily chose to repeat ninth grade. As such, the First Circuit held, Doe failed to establish the but-for causation required under the ADA.
The reason Doe repeated his freshmen year, the First Circuit held, was so that he could have a full four-year experience at his new school, not because of his learning disabilities. Therefore, the evidence clearly demonstrates that Doe’s reclassification upon his first transfer was unrelated to his disability. As a result, the First Circuit concluded, Doe’s disability did not prevent him from playing sports during his fourth year at a member school of the league. To the contrary, if Doe had remained within the league’s jurisdiction upon his first transfer and done so without reclassifying, his “senior” year would have occurred in his fourth year of high school regardless of his disability, and the rule thus would not have prevented him from playing in his “senior” year. Rather, Doe sought to play sports for an extra year under the league’s authority, even though his choice to reclassify — and thereby delay his “senior” year to his fifth year of high school — had nothing to do with his disability.
Even if Doe could establish a causal link between his disability and the denial of his waiver request, the First Circuit found that his reasonable-accommodation claim failed for another reason: the accommodation he sought, waiving the Eight-Semester Rule, would constitute a “fundamental alteration” of the league’s athletics program.
In holding that Doe’s requested accommodation constitutes a fundamental alteration to the league’s interscholastic athletics program, the court found the rule was essential to competitive high school sports in Rhode Island. Without it, a student in a ninth or 10th semester of high school could consume the playing time otherwise available to other students, as well as potentially truncate the postseasons of other teams that lack the same physical maturity advantage, directly undermining the league’s pedagogical mission. Therefore, the league’s eight-semester limitation is foundational to the competitive parity that maximizes student participation in high school sports in Rhode Island.
Finally, the essential nature of the eight-semester limitation is further evidenced by the fact that, of the 34 waivers of the Eight-Semester Rule granted by the league over the past 10 years, not a single one permitted a student to play sports for more than eight semesters. Rather, in every case, the student requesting a waiver was prevented from playing during one or more of their first eight semesters of high school due to extenuating circumstances that precluded his/her attendance in school. The students that benefitted from these waivers thus did not gain the advantage of extra semesters’ athletic training that Doe did and therefore did not imply the same risks to the league’s objectives as Doe’s requested accommodation.
Fact-base assessment
So, what can high school athletic administrators and parents learn from Doe v. Rhode Island Interscholastic League?
First, while it did not dictate the application of a waiver in this case, the ADA requires that high school and athletics associations make reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. What is a reasonable accommodation? That is going to depend on the facts.
In Doe, the athlete had played eight semesters of high school sports and was seeking an extra benefit — a fifth year. Therefore, waiving the Eight-Semester Rule would have been a substantial modification to the way Rhode Island typically administers high school sports. If, however, the athlete had an injury or other family problems that forced him to miss an entire year, waving the Eight-Semester Rule may have been reasonable. Either way, it is up to the athletics association to conduct an individual assessment based on the facts.
Second, while students who are ineligible according to an association’s rules may request a waiver, which in Rhode Island were granted a fair number of times, the review process for such waivers is not automatic and not intended to provide athletes with disabilities extra benefits — for example, in the form of a fifth year of high school sports competition.
