Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, et al. (531 U.S. 288)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 20, 2001 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 531 U.S. 288 · 121 S. Ct. 924
- Decided
- February 20, 2001
- Term
- October Term 2000
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Souter
- Issue area
- Due Process
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court. The issue is whether a statewide association incorporated to regulate interscholastic athletic competition among public and private secondary schools may be regarded as engaging in state action when it enforces a rule against a member school. The association in question here includes most public schools located within the State, acts through their representatives, draws its officers from them, is largely funded by their dues and income received in their stead, and has historically been seen to regulate in lieu of the State Board of Education’s exercise of its own authority. We hold that the association’s regulatory activity may and should be treated as state action owing to the pervasive entwinement of state school officials in the structure of the association, there being no offsetting reason to see the association’s acts in any other way. I Respondent Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (Association) is a not-for-profit membership corporation organized to regulate interscholastic sport among the public and private high schools in Tennessee that belong to it. No school is forced to join, but without any other authority actually regulating interscholastic athletics, it enjoys the memberships of almost all the State’s public high schools (some 290 of them or 84% of the Association’s voting membership), far…
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