Alta is for skiers— and a ruling made on Tuesday by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals will keep it that way for some time.
According to an article by KSL, the Denver-based federal appeals court backed the decision to keep Alta skiers only after the snowboard interest group, Wasatch Equality took an earlier ruling to appeals court. That attempt proved futile, as a federal judge threw out the appeal and instead aligned with Alta Ski Area and the US Forest Service in what is bad news for snowboarders far and wide.
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Members of Wasatch Equality say that Alta’s prohibition of snowboarders is based on discrimination and as such, violates the 14th amendment. For some, that argument seems overreaching.
The three judge panel agreed, saying that the ban on snowboarders does not align with the civil rights struggles that the 14th amendment seeks to prevent. Instead, the court found that Alta is a private ski area, which can create its own rules even though the land on which they operate is federally owned. Deer Valley and Mad River Glen are the other two ski areas in the United States that remain “skiers only.”
That said, the Alta Snowboard Team will continue to take laps on the famed Wasatch terrain, whether Alta wants them or not…