## Facts

- Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) is a nonprofit membership organization that regulates interscholastic athletics for most Tennessee public high schools and many private schools.
- Member schools adopted and enforced an “anti-recruiting/undue influence” rule restricting targeted recruitment of middle-school students for athletic participation.
- Brentwood Academy, a private school and voluntary TSSAA member, was sanctioned after its football coach sent a letter to eighth-grade boys inviting them to spring football practice.
- TSSAA determined the letter constituted prohibited recruiting and imposed penalties including probation, postseason restrictions, and a fine.
- Brentwood sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging the rule’s enforcement violated the First Amendment and that TSSAA’s adjudicatory process denied procedural due process.
- After prior litigation established TSSAA acted under color of state law based on entwinement with public school officials, the lower courts on remand ruled for Brentwood on First Amendment and due process grounds, and the Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether enforcing TSSAA’s anti-recruiting rule to sanction a coach’s targeted letter to middle-school students violated the First Amendment when the school voluntarily joined the association and agreed to its rules.
2. Whether TSSAA’s enforcement proceedings denied procedural due process based on alleged consideration of ex parte information and decisionmaking by officials affiliated with other member schools.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment for Brentwood and remanded.
- The Court held TSSAA’s application of its recruiting restriction to the coach’s letter did not violate the First Amendment.
- The Court held Brentwood was not denied procedural due process by TSSAA’s adjudicative structure or the alleged procedural irregularities on the record presented.

## Legal Principles

- A state-actor interscholastic athletic association may impose speech-related conditions on voluntary members when the conditions are necessary to operate an efficient and effective state-sponsored athletic league.
- Targeted recruiting communications by coaches to young students may be regulated more readily than core public discourse because of risks of pressure, misrepresentation, and undue influence.
- A state actor may not condition participation on an unrestricted waiver of constitutional rights; limits must be tied to legitimate operational needs of the regulatory program.
- Procedural due process requires a fair tribunal, but does not require decisionmakers to be free of all institutional affiliations; ordinary administrative arrangements do not establish unconstitutional bias absent a showing of disqualifying prejudice or structural unfairness.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld TSSAA’s anti-recruiting restriction as a permissible condition of voluntary participation in a state-linked athletic league and rejected Brentwood’s claim that the association’s enforcement process denied a fair hearing.


Tenn. Secondary Sch. Athletic Ass’n v. Brentwood Acad., 551 U.S. 291 (2007)