Could Minn. School District Bounce Math Teacher’s Basketball Injury Out of Court?

What Do You Think?

For an injury to be compensable, the employee must be engaging in activities reasonably incidental to employment. What exactly relates to employment can get foggy, however, especially in the school context, where teachers may interact with students outside of their normal instructional duties.

Take the case of a math teacher in Minnesota who was not a coach and injured her knee after joining students for basketball practice. The claimant worked for a magnet school. The school required teachers to find creative ways to foster relationships with students outside of their normal duties and even outside of normal work hours. Teachers had discretion concerning how to foster relationships with kids. Some joined them at lunch, at family nights, or in clubs, for example.

One way the claimant built relationships was by participating in basketball practice. One day, she was playing basketball with students around 4 p.m. (her official teaching duties ended around 3:30 p.m.), when she tore her ACL.

The claimant filed a workers’ compensation claim, which the school district denied. Specifically, it argued, the injury occured after normal work hours and while she was engaged in a voluntary activity too unrelated to her teaching duties to be in the course of employment. The case went all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

To be compensable under the Workers' Compensation Act, the court said, an injury must arise out of and in the course of employment. To determine whether an injury occurred "in the course of" employment, courts consider, among other factors:

1. The time of the incident that resulted in the injury in relation to work hours;
2. The location of the incident that resulted in the injury; and 
3. The circumstances surrounding the injury.

Did the teacher injure her knee in the course of her employment?

A. Yes. The school required teachers to engage in activities outside their normal instructional activities.

B. No. She was injured during an activity that bore too little relationship to her employment.

If you selected A, you agreed with the court in Lindsay v. Minneapolis Sch. Dist., No. A25-0193 (Minn. 10/22/25), which found that both the timing and circumstances of the injury showed it occurred in the course of employment.

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As to timing, it happened about 30 minutes after the end of her formal workday, which was within a reasonable period beyond her regular work hours, the court stated.

Further, the circumstances indicated she was engaging in activities that were reasonably incidental to her job. “In the course of employment,” the court stated, includes an act outside the employee’s regular duties which is undertaken in good faith to advance the employer's interests. This is the case even if the activity does not further the employee’s own assigned work.

“[The school] administration expressly encouraged using activities outside of school hours to build relationships with students; indeed, the failure to build relationships with students would be reflected in a teacher's formal evaluation,” the court said. She was carrying out that mandate when she injured her knee.

Given that her injury occurred at school, shortly after she stopped teaching, and while she was engaging in work related to her duties, the injury occurred in the course of employment and was compensable.

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