Free-speech fight between state athletic association, school back before court
By The Associated Press
12.11.02
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A 4-year-old battle pitting Brentwood Academy, the First Amendment and the Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Association goes to trial today in U.S. District Court.
At stake is how closely high school sports are regulated in Tennessee.
Brentwood Academy sued TSSAA in 1998, saying the group's recruiting restrictions violated the school's right to free speech. The suit has already been in federal district court once before moving on to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and even the Supreme Court.
Now, it's back in the lap of U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell, who originally ruled against TSSAA in July 1998.
Campbell will conduct a bench trial during the next week to consider evidence that revolves around the recruiting of young football players.
The lawsuit started with a set of football tickets and a form letter. The tickets came from Carlton Flatt, a legendary football coach at Brentwood Academy, a private Williamson County school with a national reputation as a football powerhouse.
Flatt gave the tickets to a middle school coach, who used them to take some of his players to a Brentwood game. Flatt also sent letters in 1997 to middle school students who had already contractually agreed to attend Brentwood Academy in the fall of 1998. The letters provided information about spring football practice, and Flatt followed up with phone calls.
The TSSAA sanctioned Brentwood Academy for violating the association's recruiting rules, intended to keeping coaching staffs from exerting "undue influence" by initiating contact with middle schoolers.
The TSSAA fined Brentwood Academy $3,000 and placed its athletic program on four years' probation. Brentwood Academy sued in federal court, saying the TSSAA was inhibiting the school's First Amendment rights to communicate with its incoming students.
The athletic association appealed Campbell's 1998 ruling, arguing to the 6th Circuit that as a nonprofit association, TSSAA was not a "state actor" and was immune from constitutional scrutiny.
The appellate court sided with TSSAA in 1999, but the U.S. Supreme Court thought otherwise. It found that TSSAA was controlled by teachers and principals, which are government employees.
The opinion allowed Brentwood Academy to pursue the claim that TSSAA's recruiting rules violate the school's First Amendment right to free speech. Since then, the 6th Circuit has ordered a limited trial on the school's claims.