Sydney Phillips
A New Jersey judge has ruled that a Catholic school girls can play on her school’s boys team, reversing his initial ruling, NJ.com reported.
Superior Court Judge Donald A. Kessler said that Sydney Phillips, now 13, must be allowed to play at St. Theresa’s School in Kenilworth, N.J. The eighth-grade boys team has one game remaining and the playoffs.
The case drew the attention of the WNBA’s New York Liberty, which invited Phillips to practice with them.
It went further when Sydney and her sister were expelled from the school Feb. 1 following their parents filing a lawsuit. The judge stayed the expulsions until a court hearing, and this week Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, head of the Archdiocese of Newark, reversed the decision to remove them from the school.
Among the reasons for the reversal of his Jan. 5 decision the judge cited were that two girls were allowed to play on the St. John the Apostle boys team after Tobin said the CYO rules were “unfair.” The boys on the team had unanimously voted not to play if the girls were no longer allowed on the team. The team was prevented from continuing its season, but Tobin also reversed that ruling and the team resumed play.
The Cardinal said the rules that call for boys to play with boys and girls to play with girls after the fourth grade will be reviewed at the end of the season, according to NJ.com.
“The settled legal right is that you have girls playing on boys teams,” Kessler said.
After the ruling, Theresa Mullen, Sydney’s mother, told NJ.com: “I’m happy the cardinal rescinded the expulsion and I’m happy that Sydney gets to play for the school that she loves and I’m happy that girls get to play at St. John’s School for the school that they love,” Mullen said moments after hearing Kessler’s decision in court.
Because St. Therese is a small school and not enough girls signed up to make a girls team this year, there was only a boys team. According to a lawsuit filed by her father, the adults at the school said she could not play on the boys. For its part, the school argued — according to the New York Post — that after some confusion over if the school would field a girls team, Phillips didn’t return her forms on time, a claim her father denied.