As Minnesota high schools shape and mold their fall sports teams, they’re also forging an important relationship with someone not on their roster: the athlete’s parents.

Parents entrust their children to their coaches. Coaches count on buy-in from parents in order to make calls on and off the field.

That relationship souring can, in extreme cases, lead to allegations of wrongdoing leveled against coaches. And while a vast majority of parent-coach conflicts do not end in a courtroom, in the instance these allegations are false, a defamation lawsuit may be leveled back at parents.

There’s a point, said Pat O’Neill III, a St. Paul attorney for Larson · King who focuses on professional liability litigation, when a coach decides comments by parents are enough to consider taking legal action, when “the level of engagement has just gotten too high.”

After a few high-profile defamation lawsuits against parents, where does Minnesota’s legal system draw the line in public criticism of high school coaches?

Recent rulings

In 2013, Minnesota passed what was believed to be the nation’s first law of its kind to protect coaches from disgruntled parents.

The law stipulated “parent complaints must not be the sole reason” for a coach’s removal. The law passed after coaches called attention to the growing pressure they faced from parents unhappy about decisions regarding their children’s playing time and team roles — pressure that has intensified with the use of social media and didn’t disappear after the 2013 legislation.

“Social media has kind of created a new environment for people to not only criticize them but level very serious accusations or claims. And then the question is: What do you do when that happens to you? What’s the best way to try to protect your reputation?” O’Neill said.

“A defamation lawsuit remains an avenue for people whose reputations have been harmed to try to set the record straight and recover damages resulting from false statements.”

The most recent high-profile defamation case was settled in August 2024, when Warroad girls hockey coach David Marvin received $17,000 and a walking-back of allegations while settling a defamation suit with six parents in the northern Minnesota hockey hotbed. The parents’ actions included distributing a letter accusing the coach of ignoring concussion protocol and making sexually harassing comments, among other actions.

In 2022, former Woodbury girls basketball coach Nathan McGuire received $50,000 and a signed letter from the defendant, Julie Bowlin, admitting false accusations.

Those cases came after a 2019 Minnesota State Supreme Court ruling reinstated McGuire’s once-dismissed defamation suit and ruled that high school coaches are not public officials under the First Amendment. Thus, parents and others had no legal protections when attaching a coach’s name to false claims of wrongdoing.

“Put simply, basketball is not fundamental to democracy,” the ruling said. A similar case has not been brought to the level of the U.S. Supreme Court.

At the time, Carl Pierson, executive director of the Minnesota Girls Basketball Coaches Association, told the Star Tribune, “This ruling will do more to protect coaches from malicious, baseless attacks than any level of legislation ever could.”

Coaches who decide to pursue legal action hire their own attorneys. The Minnesota State High School Coaches Association also has legal counsel available to provide advice to coaches on such matters.

Could things change?

In May 2024, Minnesota became the eighth state to adopt a version of the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA) — an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) law to prevent frivolous defamation lawsuits from intimidating defendants exercising their freedom of speech.

This legislation offers more protections for defendants in defamation cases, reinforcing that a statement considered to be commentary or opinion, made regarding an issue of public concern or even a “limited-purpose public figure,” would not be considered defamation.

But with the precedent set by the Minnesota State Supreme Court in 2019 — that public high school coaches are not considered public figures by law — this new act is unlikely to significantly change how defamation suits impact coaches and parents, said O’Neill, though “it’s hard to know how the act will affect that decision” until such a case is brought into court, he noted.

That comes, of course, with the assumption that the claim against the coach is false.

“It’s the number one thing. It can’t be subject to interpretation or open for a matter of an opinion,” O’Neill said. “Truth is an absolute defense.”

“The [UPEPA] Act provides further protection for speech related to matters of public concern or public controversies,” O’Neill added. “According to the Minnesota Supreme Court, high school sports in general is not a public controversy because it is not capable of resolution. Whether the act would apply to a claim made by a coach against parents depends on the specific statements at issue.”