All sports can resume, say lawyers who settled case against state

A group of San Diego coaches and athletes announced Thursday they have settled with the state to allow all sports to resume in California.

The language of the agreement was not immediately available. But attorneys for the plaintiffs outlined the deal at a virtual news conference, saying it opens up indoor and outdoor sports.

"We have a tentative settlement," said Stephen C. Grebing, managing partner of Wingert Grebing Brubaker & Juskie LLP in San Diego. "The settlement agreement is being worked on."

Ian R. Friedman, a partner with the same firm, then outlined the nuts and bolts of the deal. He said the terms would be formalized with pending new guidance from the California Department of Public Health.

"That will ultimately be the governing document that tells everyone what's OK," Friedman said. "These guidelines are coming. They will ultimately mean a return to all sports, indoor and outdoor, throughout the state." Gardinera v. County of San Diego, 37-2021-00004087-CU-CR-NC (S.D. Super. Ct., filed Jan. 28, 2021).

First, he noted outdoor sports will continue to reopen under guidance issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration on Feb. 19. Those rules allowed for high-contact outdoor sports to restart in counties where the COVID-19 case rate was below 14 per 100,000 residents.

San Diego County Public Health officials announced on Tuesday that the county's rate had fallen to 10.8. This means that the major outdoor sports such as football, soccer and baseball were all on the verge of being able to begin even without the settlement.

"What our settlement achieves is that it now allows the return of indoor sports that previously had not been allowed," Friedman said.

The state has been coding sports into different tiers based on transmission risk. Under the deal, Friedman said, play can begin in both higher and lower tier sports if teams keep to a testing regime similar to that used in college athletics. This requires both regular testing for COVID-19 and additional tests within 48 hours of a competition.

A coalition called Let Them Play organized the suit. The named plaintiffs are a pair of San Diego senior high school football players who hope to play again before graduating this year.

Friedman said his firm also has suits in other counties that could be affected by the pending settlement.

"For all of the counties where we have filed lawsuits, we are going to require those counties to agree to follow the state guidance," he said. "If there's any counties that choose not to follow the CDPH guidelines we'll be happy to look at filing new lawsuits."

Also on Thursday, the California Legislature overwhelmingly approved a school reopening bill. AB 86 passed the Senate 36-0 and the Assembly 72-4. It sets guidelines for schools to return to in-person instruction by March 15 and allocates $6.6 billion from the state General Fund to them to do so safely.

By April, school districts that refuse to reopen for in-person instruction would see their financial support from the state begin to fall. Newsom is expected to sign the bill, which would go into effect immediately.