Do national governing bodies owe a higher standard of care to vulnerable populations?

How much do you need to explain? "Run as fast as you can and turn left."

If they have not been adequately diagnosed then the governing body cannot be responsible for acting to a higher standard.

If an individual has not self-disclosed an impairment then the governing body cannot be responsible for acting to a higher standard.

Swimming does have some standards in place in terms of accommodation but it is hard to cover every potential situation. There are definite rules about blind and/or deaf athletes and people with these impairments have competed at high levels in the sport.

By the time an athlete got to the National Championships they have been through enough meets to know the rules, procedures, processes, etc. The only thing I can think of that would be new at that stage would be the drug testing. I have only been in the local end of swimming and we handle things much more informally but have ended up making accommodations for several athletes. The meet referee has wide discretion in interpreting an implementing the rules.

I don't think your analogy to youth athletes is really on point. It is true that USA swimming has started to provide more screening for coaches in response to some abuse but that is about covering their behinds from civil liability and not about meeting an affirmative duty in legislation like the ADA.

Thanks for that, Obvious.

As we saw with the Tarmoh affair, sometimes the rules are not clear, and important decisions are left to the athletes. Not only prospective information regarding rules is important, but also the real-time compliance with those rules, including somewhat sophisticated procedures like appeals.

The world-class children in USA Swimming was the only analogy I could think of to illustrate the situation of an adult with some sort of cognitive impairment, and I think it works well. Redress for failure to comply with affirmative ADA duties is achieved through the imposition of civil liability for the same, determined during a civil proceeding. "Civil" liability is no different based on how it arises, be it through negligence or breach of an affirmative duty or a tort.

Consider abuse of minors by coaches, an unfortunate reality in the history of swimming. The coaches are "certified" by USA Swimming as fit to coach according to a set of relevant criteria, and liability can arise from reasonable reliance upon the representations of fitness thereby made by USA Swimming.

Track coaches, if I am not mistaken, are similarly certified by USATF, and the same type of duty attaches. The rules of competition are USATF rules, and as I understand it, if they apply to a minor and there is any question of the minor not completely understanding and appreciating the rules, the minor's parents or guardian are consulted to protect the minor's interests.

But what about adults who are cognitively impaired? In the extreme example, what if a Special Olympics athlete achieved a national-class performance? And in the case of someone with slightly less cognitive impairment, is there a sliding scale of standard of care that changes proportionately to the degree of impairment?

Just wondering what people think about this.

Sports in America aren't set up that way Sprintgeezer.

I would say most NFL players by 25-26 are mentally impaired or have serious lacks of judgement due to their condition of violent impacts on the field.

Instead the support system most athletes have in America and the world, is set up to leach off of the athlete to enrich others.

Whats so cruel is that so many athletes end up broke later in life. You can't perform as a professional past 35 in most sports, in track injuries and burnout often end careers at 30.

So these poor athletes have no income stream when they were used to large paychecks.

The NFL and NBA are the worst, probably from the physicality of the NFL and the lack of maturity from NBA athletes.

This is another reason why kids who have the potential to become professional athletes should have complete independence and emancipation from their parents by the age of 16, or at least a clause in their contracts prohibiting their parents from acting as agents or nullifying a contract once the athlete reaches 18.

I believe Allyson Felix might have had this issue, and so might many of the young swimmers on the US swim team, specifically Missy Franklin.

is this thread real? Are you purposefully trying to initiate the most inane discussion possible on the boards?

I am mostly family with how this works in employment law and am not sure that how all the duties of ADA fall on voluntary associations (and public accommodations although clearly some of them do.

Well, lets go back to sliding scale. This is a complex issue. First is the issue of diagnosis. This is a binary decision, either somebody has a diagnostically appropriate disability of they do not. There is, of course, a lot of professional judgement in this and different professionals can disagree. However, it is not USATF making this assessment. If somebody has an intellectual disability with documentation then they will fall under the ADA. (Note: even here the issue may be complicated, as somebody can have a diagnosis but still not be considered disabled for some purposes, such as for Social Security Disability--for example--if your IQ ia above 60 there are additional criteria Social Security considers to see if you qualify for disability benefits). Anyway, the simple answer is somebody has to have been diagnosed by an appropriate professional.

The person then has to self-disclose that disability. After all, you can't be held responsible for accommodating a disability you do not know about.

After that, well things get really complicated. Employers (again not 100% sure how this translates) must offer reasonable accommodations. What is reasonable has a large body of both regulatory and case law attached to it. Here there is definitely a sliding scale. Here are just a couple factors:

1. Accommodation is not overly burdensome: the law would not impose the same standards on a two person business as it would on a Fortune 500 company.

2. Person is qualified to perform essential functions (or at least most of them, here things like job carving can be applied)

3. Accomodation is related to the disability (so here you could have scaling, some accommodations may be appropriate for some disabilities but not others.

I will think on this some more, this is a bit rushed.