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Originally Posted by JRutledge
Wouldn't that all depend on the nature of how the games are given or how officials are paid? If you are paid through an association directly, I know that can lead to some violating employee rules if you pay them a certain amount of money and you are not taking out taxes and social security in your payment.
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The issue arises if an officials association hires or maintains authority over an assigner and gets a chunk of money to covered scheduled games from school districts or the state from which it issues checks to officials.
That could be found to be an employer/employee relationship. Work through the IRS definition of independent contractor and the analysis shows the categorization fails.
The right to decline work is the only potential way out for the association, but even that can be defeated by a showing that the association took action that could be deemed retribution, real or implied, against a contractor who says no too often, especially if the normal custom and practice for using ratings to determine assignments is ignored to make a point..
If the check ain't coming from the school, state or league, and the officials association writes the checks, then there needs to be legal separation between officials association and assigner, otherwise the association risks being an employer, albeit one that is engaged in employee leasing. And by writes the checks, i include using a third-party vendor, such as RefPay, to handle it.
It goes to more than discrimination actions. In some jurisdictions, it may raise a game injury to an injury arising out of and in the course of employment, which means workers comp.
Also, don't try to tell me some assigners are not reluctant to assign women to boys varsity high school games. "It's happening and it's about damn time they were called on it," said the 60ish, Irish-American, Catholic, Democrat member of the AFL_CIO