Requiring a cheerleader to maintain a 2.0 grade-point average, but a basketball player to have a 1.5 GPA is discriminatory, a lawsuit filed against the Lafayette Parish School Board on Friday claims.
The suit was filed by lawyer Curtis L. Hollinger, Jr., on behalf of his minor son, a Lafayette High School junior varsity basketball player.
"It's discrimination. It's based on athletes not having the intellectual ability to meet high standards," Hollinger said of the GPA requirement, adding that he believes the discrepancy between cheerleaders and basketball players is in violation of the state and U.S. constitutions.
"The constitution says that no state can discriminate no person based on physical condition," he said. "They're both based on physical conditions and both are athletes. So how can you treat athletes that are in the same category differently."
The lower minimum GPA for basketball players "openly and unlawfully perpetuates the negative stigma and stereotype that high school basketball players are stupid, inherently inferior intellectually and inherently incapable of meeting higher academic standards, thus Plaintiff is being deprived of the educational benefit of high academic expectations in contradiction of" School Board policy, the 14th Amendment of the U.S. and the Louisiana constitutions, according to the lawsuit.
"The intent of this suit is to raise the academic standards," Hollinger said. "I want to see athletes have a chance in life after school. ... The theory is if your raise the standards then those who really want to play sports will meet those standards. We're not asking them to be 4.0 Rhodes Scholars."
The lawsuit was filed late Friday, and goes into detail showing similarities between cheerleaders and basketball players and asks that the Lafayette Parish School Board be required to make the GPAs consistent.
Hollinger hopes the suit will require the School Board to raise the minimum grade-point average for basketball players and other student athletes.
Reached by phone Friday evening, Superintendent Burnell Lemoine said he had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not comment.
The lawsuit is backed by state Rep. Rickey Hardy, D-Lafayette, who pushed for a minimum GPA of 2.0 for student athletes as a School Board member and a legislator.
The School Board rejected the idea, and a bill touting the idea was killed in the House Education Committee in 2008 and 2009.
"It's certainly hypocritical of the school system to have high standards for cheerleaders but not basketball players," Hardy said. "They both use physical strength of their bodies."
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