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Old Mon Jun 03, 2002, 04:59pm
Kelvin green Kelvin green is offline
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Join Date: Aug 1999
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First I will add the disclaimer that this is not intended to be legal advice.

Nearly all basketball officials at the high school level by definition have to be independent contractors. You are not by law an employee. As officials get to the college level and the way some conferences have control etc, there could be a case they are employees of the conference but generally they are contractors too. That being said.

There are some strange things that occur with workers comp laws, in some states you can be an independent contractor for tax and UI purposes but still be some sort of employee for Worker's Comp issues.

I have not reserached the Utah provisions lately but when I ran an umpires group a few years ago, one of the cities made us follow the Worker's Comp rule to the letter of the law which made each umpire carry proof of worker's comp or an exemption "policy" which basically was a certificate that the umpire was a self employed individual. That exemption cost $50 per official (of course we passed on the cost to the city) No other school districts or agencies have ever required it, but would have a hard time getting out of a claim with out it or so we guess. I have not heard of any litigation or claims, so a court could go either way.
Trust me we officials arent going to bring it up because we are going to pay the $50 out of our pocket unless we get forced to....
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