{"id":34,"date":"2009-02-02T13:48:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T13:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/cheerleading-is-a-contact-sport-wis-court-rules.html"},"modified":"2009-02-02T13:48:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T13:48:00","slug":"cheerleading-is-a-contact-sport-wis-court-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/cheerleading-is-a-contact-sport-wis-court-rules.html","title":{"rendered":"Cheerleading is a contact sport, Wis. court rules"},"content":{"rendered":"Date: 1\/27\/2009<br \/><br \/>By RYAN J. FOLEY<br \/>Associated Press Writer<br \/><br \/>MADISON, Wis. (AP) \u2014 High school cheerleading is a contact sport and therefore its participants cannot be sued for accidentally causing injuries, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a case being closely watched in the cheerleading world.<br \/><br \/>The court ruled that a former high school cheerleader cannot sue a teammate who failed to stop her fall while she was practicing a stunt. The court also said the injured cheerleader cannot sue her school district.<br \/><br \/>The National Cheer Safety Foundation said the decision is the first of its kind in the nation.<br \/><br \/>At issue in the case was whether cheerleaders qualify for immunity under a Wisconsin law that prevents participants in contact sports from suing each other for unintentional injuries.<br \/><br \/>It does not spell out which sports are contact sports. The District 4 Court of Appeals ruled last year cheerleading doesn&#8217;t qualify because there&#8217;s no contact between opposing teams.<br \/><br \/>But all seven members of the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to overturn that decision. In the opinion, Justice Annette Ziegler said cheerleading involves &#8220;a significant amount of physical contact between the cheerleaders.&#8221; As an example, she cited stunts in which cheerleaders are tossed in the air.<br \/><br \/>The lawsuit was brought by Brittany Noffke, who was a varsity cheerleader at Holmen High School in western Wisconsin. Practicing a stunt in 2004, Noffke fell backward off the shoulders of another cheerleader and suffered a serious head injury.<br \/><br \/>She sued a 16-year-old male teammate who was supposed to be her spotter but failed to catch her; the school district; and the district&#8217;s insurer.<br \/><br \/>Ziegler rejected Noffke&#8217;s argument that &#8220;contact sports&#8221; should mean only aggressive sports such as football and hockey. She wrote they should include any sport that that includes &#8220;physical contact between persons.&#8221;<br \/><br \/>The decision means cheerleaders can be sued only for acting recklessly. The court said Noffke&#8217;s teammate only made a mistake or showed a lack of skill. As for the school district, Ziegler said it cannot be sued for the coach&#8217;s behavior under a Wisconsin law that shields government agencies from lawsuits for the actions of employees.<br \/><br \/>Many observers had warned that families of cheerleaders would be forced to take out big insurance policies if the lower court decision stood.<br \/><br \/>Because of the increasingly difficult stunts, injuries among high school cheerleaders are a problem. Researchers at the University of North Carolina have found that two-thirds of the roughly 100 cases of &#8220;catastrophic&#8221; sports injuries among high school girls since 1982 have involved cheerleading.<br \/><br \/>Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Date: 1\/27\/2009By RYAN J. FOLEYAssociated Press WriterMADISON, Wis. (AP) \u2014 High school cheerleading is a contact sport and therefore its participants cannot be sued for accidentally causing injuries, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a case being closely watched in the cheerleading world.The court ruled that a former high school cheerleader cannot sue a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,48,123,115,47],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-wisconsin-court","tag-wisconsin-court-news","tag-wisconsin-legal-cases","tag-wisconsin-legal-issues","tag-wisconsin-legal-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wis-injury.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}