A quadriplegic athlete’s complaint that he was singled out for discrimination by a marathon in Montana has cleared a major hurdle and could have implications nationwide.

An investigator for the Montana Human Rights Bureau has found reasonable cause that the Missoula Marathon discriminated against Joe Stone by limiting the number of hand cyclists or people in wheelchairs in the event to eight, directing them to check in with officials at the starting line, imposing speed limits on them for part of the course, banning them from passing in some places, and requiring them to yield to runners.

“Discrimination can take many forms, and even people who believe they are trying to be inclusive and accepting of people with disabilities can create practices or policies that discriminate,” the state investigator, Josh Manning, concluded.

The case next goes to a conciliation process designed to reach a settlement and, if no settlement is reached, to a full administrative hearing, Tim Little, an attorney for the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, said. No hearing date has been set.

But the precedent set by this ruling is already likely to affect races all over the country, said Curt Decker, executive director of the National Disability Rights Network.

“The public-relations value of a case like this is sometimes more effective than long-term adversarial litigation,” Decker said. “People can go to their local race and say, ‘Look what happened there. You’ve got to do this. You don’t want to get sued.’”

The Background

Missoula Marathon parent Run Wild Missoula prohibited wheelchairs and hand cycles after a collision between a hand cyclist and a runner in a narrow underpass in 2009. Neither athlete was seriously hurt, and both finished the race. The organization said police had also raised concerns about the speed with which hand cyclists approached intersections along the course that remain open to vehicle traffic.

Stone, who has competed in ultramarathons and a triathlon, started lobbying the group in 2012 to reverse the ban and allow him to enter his hometown marathon, where he would attempt to qualify for Boston.

“I went into that first meeting thinking, ‘This is going to be a no-brainer. They’re totally going to support this,’” he said.

But while Run Wild Missoula agreed to allow wheelchairs and hand cycles in the half marathon it operates simultaneously, it kept them out of the marathon, expressing particular worry about a point along the route at which the two races merge.

“Our issue has always been that we’ve got a marathon and a half marathon and they are separate for the first almost 16 miles and then they join together and are on a common course for the remainder of the route,” said Tony Banovich, executive director of Run Wild Montana. “The concern has always been the safety of whether it’s wheelchairs or hand cyclists in the marathon coming back into the half marathon crowd.”

The Negotiations and Investigation

Investigative documents show a few years of back and forth over the issue between Stone and a succession of Run Wild Missoula officers and race directors. He suggested staggering the start times of the marathon and half marathon to avoid the merge problem. He took a test run of the course in a push wheelchair, but one hill was too steep. Marathon officials countered by suggesting a speed limit of 12 miles per hour along the last 11 miles for wheeled athletes.

“I wasn’t taken seriously,” Stone said. “I’d give them solutions, legitimate solutions, that would increase the safety of the race for everyone,” such as moving back the start time of the half marathon and banning headphones so runners could hear hand cyclists behind them.

Through these negotiations, the investigator found, “Stone did not feel like [organizers] treated him as a fellow athlete, but eventually ‘patted him on the head’ to let him and other disabled racers participate. … Based on Stone’s characterization of Run Wild Missoula staff, the tone of several 2014 emails, and their conduct during interviews, the investigator has found most of their statements to be disingenuous.”

Then-executive director Eva Dunn-Froebig, for example, wrote in one of those emails that “the big issue here is the safety of 4,000 runners vs. letting one person participate in the Missoula Marathon.”

Banovich, who became executive director after this period, disputes the investigator’s report. “Our actions were genuine and sincere,” he said. “How and why the investigator reached that conclusion escapes me.” The organization’s staff, Banovich said, “spent a significant amount of time working with Joe trying to find a way to accommodate the hand cycles.”

Finally, a month before the 2014 running, the marathon reopened to hand cyclists, but with several restrictions. The 12-miles-per-hour speed restriction was imposed on wheeled racers for the last 11 miles of the marathon, and they were required to always yield the right of way to runners and restricted from passing in the narrow underpass, though runners were allowed to pass there. A cap of eight hand-cyclist and wheelchair athletes was set. Only one registered.

Stone rode in his hand cycle without registering, accompanied by two able-bodied cyclists, and video-recorded it. And that’s when, near the finish, the video shows a volunteer telling him to ride off the course or “get up and walk,” bringing the dispute to a head.

“I said, ‘Well, I can’t walk,’” Stone said. “That was kind of what solidified what I’d been feeling the whole time.”

He filed his complaint last December.

The resulting investigation proves “the race staff really didn’t do what they were supposed to do under the Montana Human Rights Act,” said Beth Brenneman, a staff attorney at Disability Rights Montana who represents Stone. “They didn’t do an independent assessment of the risk. Had they actually looked at alternatives to address the risk they thought was posed, they would have found a way to accommodate people. We don’t say there can’t be any restrictions at all, just that the restrictions shouldn’t just apply to one group of people.”

Changes for the 2015 Race

This year, the marathon allowed hand cyclists and wheelchair athletes with almost no restrictions, only recommendations that they wear helmets and attach flags at least five feet high to their devices to improve visibility. They were given a separate start time five minutes ahead of runners (but not required to check in with race officials) and provided with ADA-compliant port-a-potties and shuttle buses.

Two hand cyclists competed. Still unhappy that his safety proposals were not adopted—pushing back the half marathon start time, banning headphones, and other measures—Stone did not.

“They didn’t do one thing to make the race safer,” he said. “They did a lot of things to make themselves look good, which was make the rules so there’s equal treatment. So now everybody’s treated equally, but it’s not safe. The same safety concerns are there. I can’t help but think there’s going to be another accident.”

Banovich said the marathon is currently evaluating the participation of the hand cyclists in this year’s race. Race officials and Stone “maybe haven’t seen eye to eye,” he said, “but in the big picture we’re trying to figure out how to make it work and do it safely.”

The Potential Implications

Brenneman and others say the impact of the case could be widespread. “We’re hoping that it’s going to be precedent-setting, which is why we brought it in the first place,” she said.

One important precedent affecting running races has already been set: Though the Missoula Marathon contended that it is not a public accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act—that it doesn’t own the streets along which the event is run, the city and county do, and that it’s therefore not responsible for making them accessible—the investigator determined that it is. That call was based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case against the PGA that found it to be a public accommodation, even though it doesn’t own the courses used for its tournaments, because it governs the rules of play and conduct.

Most major marathons now allow hand cycles, but several don’t, including at least one other in Montana: the Governor’s Cup in Helena, run partly along unpaved roads and sand. Neither do the Colfax Marathon in Denver, the Phoenix Marathon, or the Madison Marathon, to name a few.

Disability advocates say citing safety concerns to justify these bans is often not enough. If there are safety issues, they say, it’s up to marathon officials to address them.

“Whatever the issue is, there’s a standard pushback from people who don’t want to comply [with rules about equal treatment for disabled people], and safety is always one of them,” said Decker, of the National Disability Rights Network. “You have to sort of pick that apart, of what is the safety issue, and is it real or just an excuse to not change the way you’re doing business.”

Reasonable restrictions can be imposed on all participants, “given the specifics of any course,” Brenneman said. They just need to be applied equally, she said. “That is the analysis we hope other marathon directors will use.”

But there are legitimate safety issues around wheeled equipment, race directors say.

“I really believe everyone is trying to do the right thing here,” said Dave McGillivray, founder and president of DMSE Sports. (McGillivray also writes for RunnersWorld.com.) But “this issue truly is more complex than most people realize. Many times it is challenging to make it all work perfectly given all the complexities involved and moving parts such as rates of speed, road closure, topography of the course, density of runners, and on and on it goes.”

McGillivray said: “The best solutions are always the ones where we all work collaboratively and gain a good understanding of all the facts and challenges and respect each other’s situation and position.”

That is likely to happen much more often with heightened activism from disabled athletes, said Decker. “More and more athletes with disabilities don’t like getting shunted off to the Paralympics or the Special Olympics,” he said. “A lot of that early sort of not-rocking-the-boat attitude is gone. People have been mainstreamed, and people with disabilities now feel that there’s no place that I can’t have access to.”

As for Stone, he said he’s willing to continue the fight and go to court if necessary.

“If they push me to play my final card, then I want to set some legal precedent so this won’t keep going on around the country,” he said. “People with disabilities should not have to fight for years to do a simple race in their hometown.”

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