California Soccer Association North

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First, we would like to say thank you for playing for a team that is part of the family of leagues affiliated with U.S. Soccer through California Soccer Association North (CSAN). The people who manage your affiliated league work hard to provide you with the best available fields, appropriate game schedules, trophies, fair Rules of Competition and the fair adjudication of protests and disciplinary actions. Your league managers also try to get you competent, unbiased referees for your games. You have probably heard that this is a constant challenge.

One of our major efforts is to improve the working environment for referees, so that fewer

referees prematurely decide to retire from officiating. This effort is U.S. Soccer’s Referee

Abuse Prevention (RAP) initiative. While a lot of the RAP initiative has focused on the referee

work environment in youth games, the adult game is definitely also included.

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Phase 1 of the RAP initiative involved revising the U.S. Soccer Policy 531-9 regarding the abuse and/or assault of game officials. The first set of revisions were approved in 2024. This U.S. Soccer policy assigns to the State Association (CSAN) the responsibility to adjudicate these incidents.

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Phase 2 involved establishing nationwide penalty guidelines for various levels of incidents of

referee abuse or assault. These penalty guidelines went into effect on March 1, 2025.

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Note that the guidelines are just that: guidelines. A CSAN investigator or hearing panel still needs to interpret evidence such as the referee’s report and decide where the incident falls within the guidelines. Despite the fact that CSAN is responsible for adjudicating properly reported incidents of referee abuse or assault incident, CSAN also allows your league disciplinary committee to take action regarding the incident if it involves a player or coach. We ask league disciplinary committees to follow the new U.S. Soccer guidelines. However, CSAN will still adjudicate the case in a proceeding that is separate from the league’s process.

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The RAP initiative is an ambitious effort – it is trying to change a longstanding culture in which too many players, coaches and spectators believe that they have a right to shout abuse (or worse) at referees while those referees are working a game. The truth is that players, coaches and spectators have no more right to abuse referees at games than your boss at work has a right to abuse you while you are on the job.

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The cultural change the RAP initiative seeks will not be easy to accomplish and will take some significant time. There will also be unforeseen problems that arise which will require revisions to the policy, the guidelines, the referee reporting process and the adjudication process itself.

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For more information about the RAP initiative and the penalty guidelines, go to the U.S. Soccer website at: https://www.ussoccer.com/rap

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We welcome your thoughts and feedback about the RAP initiative at office@csan.net. CSAN is fortunate to have one of its officers as part of the nine-member U.S. Soccer Referee Abuse

Prevention Working Group, so your constructive comments can be taken directly to the top

decisionmakers in U.S. Soccer.