Advocates for the Disabled Go to Bat for Coach

Victor Barrios’ wheelchair has run smack into Rule 10, Article 7 of the California Interscholastic Federation: Equipment such as crutches, canes, wheelchairs, etc., is prohibited on the baseball field. Casts, splints and braces may be worn, if padded.

On Tuesday, Barrios, a third-base coach for the Westminster High School baseball team, filed a civil-rights suit in U.S. District Court against the CIF and the Orange County Baseball Officials Assn., whose umpires have not allowed him on the field for most of this season. His case comes up for hearing today.

Advocates for the disabled said Thursday that the federation rule is left over from the dark ages.

“It isn’t just that this league clearly hasn’t heard of things like the Americans with Disabilities Act, but they are relying on very old stereotypes and myths about the capabilities of people with disabilities,” said Sid Wolinsky, director of litigation for Disabled Rights Advocates in San Francisco.

“We have an office in Central Europe. That is the type of post-Soviet thinking I hear from there, not something you expect in California in the 1990s.”

Baseball association officials have said they worry that Barrios, a paraplegic, either could be hurt on the field or that his wheelchair could pose a hazard to players.

CIF officials, however, insist they are not discriminating or stereotyping. They say they are just following the rules.

Bill Clark of the CIF Southern Section, based in Cerritos, declined to discuss specifics of the case, but cited Rule 10 in defending the organization. CIF officials did not know how long the rule has been on the organization’s books.

The attorney for the CIF, Andrew Patterson, said he expected the suit to be resolved amicably and that Barrios would be able to coach the rest of the season.

Patterson said he learned of the matter last week and did not know why most of the baseball season had passed without its resolution.

Though he defended the rule, he said the lawsuit was unnecessary because the CIF sought and received permission from its national headquarters last week for Barrios to coach on the field.

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Barrios’ attorneys are fighting such responses with a barrage of arguments--and a ruling in a remarkably similar case in Arizona. In that 1992 case, involving a Little League third-base coach who was banned from the field because of his wheelchair, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that sports organizations must make decisions based on individual abilities and not ban an entire class of people based on the equipment they might need to use.

The attorneys--including those from the Center for Law in the Public Interest, which is providing Barrios free legal representation--express outrage at the ban on his wheelchair. But the coach himself bears few grudges.

Barrios, a former gang member, swears he feels no resentment toward the rival gang member who shot him at age 18 and put him in a wheelchair in the first place. Now 26, he says that losing the ability to walk opened his soul to people and places he had never before encountered.

He enrolled in Cal State Fullerton, where he is a junior majoring in physical education. He studies hard and in his spare time coaches his 8-year-old daughter’s softball team and the Westminster Lions freshmen baseball team.

“I’m a much better person now than I was before,” Barrios said. “Now, if I can do some good somewhere, then I want to do it. But this [ban from the field] is something I just don’t understand.”

Barrios’ lawyers at the Center for Law in the Public Interest say that even without the 1992 court decision, the CIF rule is suspect on several fronts.

Chapter 10 of the federation rules deals with umpires, not coaches, they note. And they and Barrios wonder aloud why the rule was suddenly enforced this year, four years after he began coaching. And in any event, they said, the disabilities act still requires each case to be decided on an individual basis.

“This is the rule they found after weeks of excluding him,” said Laura Diamond, an attorney for the center. “They told us they’d try to get a variance from it so he can coach, but actually there’s no need for a variance at all since it only applies to umpires.”

The Lions’ season ends May 13, and only four games remain. The team, which has a 5-4 record, has suffered from the shuffling of the coaching staff, he said.

“What I want now are some answers,” he said.

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He sees the ban as a threat to his dreams of a career in physical education, and that has planted the seed of activism in him.

“This is exactly the kind of thing the [Americans with Disabilities Act] was passed to accomplish,” said Ken Stein, of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund in Berkeley. “The decisions about people’s careers and participation in all areas of life are not to be governed by myths, fears and stereotypes.

“The fact that the man has been doing this for four years and all of a sudden they’re concerned about his safety says more about stereotyping than that he’s a danger to himself.”

Cliff Crase, the editor of Sports and Spokes magazine, a publication for athletes with disabilities, blamed ignorance for Barrios’ banishment from the field.

Able-bodied people often are do not realize the ease and speed with which a wheelchair can be used, he said.

“I think,” he said, “someone that isn’t used to watching a disabled person play sports doesn’t realize how well they can defend themselves.”