The Michigan Mega Conference was a large high school athletic league comprising twenty-eight schools which disbanded in mid-2009, with its former members either becoming independent or forming their own leagues. Member schools were predominantly located in suburban Wayne County, Michigan, mainly in Downriver. The other schools were located in neighboring Monroe and Washtenaw Counties. The schools were also members of the Michigan High School Athletic Association and compete in the organization's post-season state championships. Depending on the sport, the schools were divided into three or four divisions.
When the MEGA Conference was formed in 1993, many schools were denied entry into the conference. The rejected schools alleged that this decision was based on their large Black student populations, claiming that the founding schools "discriminated in the formation and operation of the league."
Consequently, current member schools Dearborn Heights Robichaud and Romulus filed complaints with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the United States Department of Education regarding the denial of their admission.
The OCR determined that the athletic league had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The schools declined a resolution offered by the OCR, and the matter was subsequently referred to the Justice Department in the summer of 1995.
A resolution was later reached between the eighteen founding members and the Justice Department to include the aforementioned schools along with five others—Highland Park, Inkster, River Rouge, Ypsilanti, and Ypsilanti Willow Run—resulting in an athletic conference of twenty-five schools.[1]
The Mega Conference officially disbanded after the 2008 season after members of the league began to fracture off and form their own conferences, citing a desire to have more geographically centered leagues, as opposed to leagues more focused around the schools' athletic strength.
There were 2 main conferences formed from the ashes of the Mega Conference, with those being the Western Wayne Athletic Conference and the Downriver League. However, a couple of schools chose instead to join the Southeastern Conference, while a few others chose to run an independent schedule.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
