From Regulating Removal to Regulating Play: Law, Politics, and the Direct Regulation of TBI-inducing Youth Sports

Background: In 2014, California became the first-state to reform its youth sports TBI law to include restrictions on certain within-sport plays and time limits on sports practice.  As other states begin to think about similar new forms of direct-regulation of TBI-inducing sports, it is useful to gather evidence about the efficacy and predicted adoption of such new interventions at both the state and individual level.

Methods: Using an original public opinion survey and archival research methods, this paper will analyze these new “play-regulation” youth sports TBI laws.  Special emphasis will be placed on the survey’s within-group experiments assessing the relationship between the level and quality of information provided to parents about the risks of sports-injury and the likelihood that such parents would support various TBI-prevention law and policy reforms.  Archival research will compare policy-arguments for and against such new interventions from state-level hearings and debates about such proposed measures.

Results: Though public opinion about youth sports TBI laws remains high, support falls for laws that attempt to directly regulate or eliminate certain types of sports.  Parents with school-age children and/or coaches of youth sports exhibit a particular tendency to oppose law interventions at greater rates than the general public.  Legislative debates reveal a more ideologically polarized response to new measures. 

Conclusions: Initial evidence suggests that though legislators are still experimenting with youth sports TBI lawmaking, the more invasive the regimes, the greater likelihood of public and legislative resistance to both the adoption and implementation of new TBI-reduction initiatives.