Clay-Chalkville High School’s formerly top-ranked football team will not be playing for a Class 6A state championship this year, and that decision is now final.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Alabama High School Athletic Association, which had previously ruled that Clay-Chalkville used an ineligible player for its first nine games and must forfeit those games. The ruling, handed down late Thursday, overturned an injunction handed down by Jefferson Circuit Court which stayed the AHSAA ruling last week.

The court cited precedents in 1970 and 1984 cases before the court, which in essence held that the AHSAA is a voluntary organization which has the right to enact and enforce its own rules on its membership. All nine justices ruled in favor of the AHSAA, though two justices wrote opinions which concurred with the majority in part and dissented in part.

The ruling restores the playoff brackets to where they were last week, with Gadsden City moving up to take the fourth playoff spot in its region.

In its ruling, the court rendered moot two other injunctions, one issued by Etowah Circuit Court madating that Gadsden City be reinststed in the playoffs, and another by Morgan Circuit Court which said that Austin should keep its second-place spot in the region, giving the school a home game Friday night and a weaker opponent.

The original ruling held that the Cougars used a player which had previously played at Huffman High, but left the school while not in good standing. The player transferred from Huffman to Restoration Academy in Fairfield, which belongs to thre Alabama Independent Schools Association. Clay-Chalkville officials said thta there was nothing in the player’s file from Huffman which indicated that he did not leave that school in good standing. After the first ruling, the Jefferson County School System soght and was granted a court injunction against the ruling.

Clay-Chalkville had been ranked atop the Class 6A poll by the Alabama Sports Writers Association the week before the AHSAA’s initial ruling. It was the first time in the poll’s history that a top-ranked team had been removed from playoff contention because of forfeits. (Hoover had previously been forced to forfeit games in 2007 for using an ineligible player, but not enough to force it out of the post-season.)