Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Assn. Case Brief

Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Assn.

Full access

Unlock the video and quiz

The written brief is free to read below. Subscribe to watch the video explainer and take the quiz.

Create an account Log in

Takeaway

In short, this case holds that a nominally private association is a state actor when public institutions and officials are so pervasively entwined in its governance and operation that its regulatory actions are fairly treated as those of the State.

Background

The Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) is a nonprofit corporation that regulates interscholastic athletics for its member schools. Although membership was formally voluntary, nearly all Tennessee public high schools belonged to it: public schools comprised about 84% of its voting membership. Its governing legislative council and board of control were elected from school administrators, and, when TSSAA punished Brentwood Academy, every voting member of both bodies was a public-school administrator.

TSSAA set eligibility, recruiting, academic, and other athletic rules. It had also long operated in close relationship with Tennessee’s State Board of Education. The Board had previously designated TSSAA to supervise and regulate public-school interscholastic athletics, approved its rules, placed ex officio representatives on its governing bodies, and allowed TSSAA employees into the state retirement system. Although the Board removed its express designation of TSSAA in 1996, the practical relationship continued.

In 1997, TSSAA found Brentwood Academy, a private member school, guilty of violating its recruiting rule by sending incoming students and parents information about spring football practice. TSSAA put Brentwood’s athletic program on four years’ probation, barred its football and boys’ basketball teams from playoffs for two years, and imposed a $3,000 fine.

Brentwood sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that TSSAA’s enforcement of the rule was state action that violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The District Court granted summary judgment to Brentwood, holding that TSSAA was a state actor. The Sixth Circuit reversed, concluding that TSSAA was neither performing an exclusively public function nor acting under state coercion, encouragement, or a sufficiently symbiotic relationship with the State. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a conflict over whether statewide high-school athletic associations are state actors.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether TSSAA’s enforcement of its recruiting rule against Brentwood Academy constituted state action for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment and 42 U.S.C. § 1983.

Holding

Yes. TSSAA’s regulatory enforcement was state action because public schools and public officials were pervasively entwined in its structure, management, and operation.

Reasoning

The state-action inquiry asks whether there is a sufficiently close nexus between the State and the challenged conduct such that ostensibly private conduct may fairly be treated as the State’s own. This is a fact-bound, normative inquiry, not a rigid checklist. State action may result from coercion, significant encouragement, joint activity, delegation of a public function, government control, or entwinement with governmental policies, management, or control.

TSSAA was, in practical terms, overwhelmingly an organization of Tennessee public schools acting through their officials. Public schools made up 84% of its voting membership, and member schools were represented by principals or faculty members. Those representatives elected TSSAA’s governing bodies from public-school principals, assistant principals, and superintendents. At the time of the sanctions, all voting members of the board of control and legislative council were public-school administrators.

These public officials participated in TSSAA as part of their official educational responsibilities, not as private individuals. Interscholastic athletics were an integral part of Tennessee public education, and the public schools needed a common mechanism to establish rules and organize competition. By acting collectively through TSSAA, the public schools exercised their authority to carry out those responsibilities.

The operational and financial facts reinforced that conclusion. Many governing meetings occurred during school hours, and public schools materially supported TSSAA. Schools paid membership dues and allowed TSSAA to receive gate proceeds from tournaments involving their teams. Unlike an ordinary government contractor, TSSAA was the member schools’ collective organization and exercised the schools’ own authority to regulate athletic competition and charge admission to games.

Tennessee was also entwined with TSSAA from the top down. The State Board of Education had historically designated TSSAA as the regulator of public-school athletics, approved its rules—including the recruiting rule at issue—and retained a continuing presence through nonvoting ex officio representatives on TSSAA’s governing bodies. TSSAA employees were also eligible for the state retirement system. The 1996 deletion of formal designation language changed the wording of the relationship, but not its practical reality.

TSSAA’s argument that it did not satisfy other state-action tests did not defeat the finding of state action. The Court assumed that regulating interscholastic athletics might not be an exclusively traditional public function and accepted that the State had not specifically coerced or encouraged the challenged recruiting decision. But no single state-action criterion is necessary in every case. Pervasive entwinement itself justified treating TSSAA’s conduct as public action.

No countervailing concern justified withholding constitutional accountability. Treating TSSAA as a state actor would not create a new flood of federal litigation; most courts had already treated similar statewide athletic associations as state actors without such an effect. Nor could TSSAA avoid suit simply because a public school enforcing an association rule might also be subject to suit. The Court decided only that Brentwood could properly name TSSAA as a § 1983 defendant, not whether Brentwood would ultimately prevail on its constitutional claims.

Dissents

Justice Thomas

Reasoning

Justice Thomas dissented, arguing that tSSAA’s enforcement of the recruiting rule was private conduct, not conduct fairly attributable to Tennessee. TSSAA was formed as a private corporation, schools were not compelled to join, and its authority over members arose from voluntary membership agreements. The State neither created TSSAA nor directed the specific enforcement decision against Brentwood.

The fact that public schools made up most of TSSAA’s membership and that public-school officials served on its board did not make their actions governmental. Board members represented all schools in their geographic regions, public and private alike, and TSSAA’s governing documents did not require public schools or public officials to dominate the association.

Under established state-action doctrines, TSSAA did not perform a function traditionally and exclusively reserved to the State. Interscholastic athletics historically developed through private and local efforts, and Tennessee did not formally acknowledge TSSAA until decades after its creation. A service may benefit public schools without becoming an exclusive public function.

The State did not create, control, coerce, significantly encourage, or jointly participate with TSSAA in enforcing its recruiting rule. Public-school membership dues supplied only a small portion of TSSAA’s revenue, and public funding or public benefit alone cannot transform a private organization into a state actor. The State’s general permission for public schools to join TSSAA was merely acquiescence, not governmental direction.

The majority improperly created a freestanding and undefined entwinement theory of state action. The cases invoked by the majority involved more established grounds for attribution: government creation and control in Lebron, a state-created agency in Pennsylvania v. Board of Directors of City Trusts, and a public-function analysis in Evans v. Newton. None held that entwinement alone could turn a private organization into the State.

Because the majority did not define the limits of entwinement, its rule threatened to expose many private associations involving public schools or public officials to constitutional litigation. State-action doctrine should preserve a sphere of private autonomy and avoid imposing responsibility on a State for conduct it neither controlled nor caused.