Opinion ID: 198712
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Symbiosis.

Text: 26 The appellant masses her heaviest artillery behind the claim that LBC and the Town enjoyed a symbiotic relationship, sufficient to establish state action. In an evolving area of the law, this claim's provenance is open to question.
27 Almost four decades ago, the Supreme Court held that a symbiotic relationship between a State and a private entity justified a finding of state action. See Burton, 365 U.S. at 725. In several later cases, however, the Court has either distinguished or ignored Burton's broadest language. See, e.g., Sullivan, 119 S. Ct. at 988-89; United States Olympic Comm., 483 U.S. at 547; Blum, 457 U.S. at 1011. Still, the Court has never expressly overruled Burton, and none of the later cases have involved equal protection claims based on race or gender discrimination. Cf. Girard v. 94th St. & Fifth Ave. Corp., 530 F.2d 66, 69 (2d Cir. 1976) (suggesting that state action requirements may be less demanding for such claims); Weise v. Syracuse Univ., 522 F.2d 397, 405-07 (2d Cir. 1975) (similar). 28 In all events, we need not determine today either the extent to which Burton remains good law or whether the parameters of what constitutes state action may change depending on the nature of the right at issue. 5 Even if we treat Burton's classic symbiotic relationship test as fully intact, the appellant cannot prevail. 29 In terms, this test requires an evaluation of whether the government has so far insinuated itself into a position of interdependence with [the private entity] that it must be recognized as a joint participant in the challenged activity. Burton, 365 U.S. at 725. A true symbiosis is predicated on interdependence and joint participation. Thus, in contrast to the nexus inquiry, this avenue of approach ousts the challenged conduct from center stage and concentrates instead on the nature of the overall relationship between the State and the private entity. See id.; Rodrguez-Garca, 904 F.2d at 96-97. 30 Despite this focus on the totality of the circumstances, the case law suggests some factors to which courts typically attach special weight. The most salient of these is the extent to which the private entity is (or is not) independent in the conduct of its day-to-day affairs. See Evans v. Newton, 382 U.S. 296, 301 (1966); Barrios-Velazquez, 84 F.3d at 494-95; United Auto Workers, 43 F.3d at 908. Relatedly, the circumstances surrounding a private entity's use of public facilities warrant careful attention. In this regard, courts long have recognized that a municipality's mere provision of recreational fora (such as athletic facilities) does not give rise to state action. See Gilmore v. City of Montgomery, 417 U.S. 556, 574 (1974); Sherman v. Community Consol. Sch. Dist. 21, 8 F.3d 1160, 1167-68 (7th Cir. 1993); Magill, 516 F.2d at 1333, 1335; Fortin, 514 F.2d at 347. If, however, a municipality rations otherwise freely accessible recreational facilities, the case for state action will naturally be stronger than if the facilities are simply available to all comers without condition or reservation. Gilmore, 417 U.S. at 574. 31 Subject to certain caveats, another factor that courts take into account in evaluating the nature of the relationship between the State and a private entity is whether (and if so, to what extent) the former knowingly shared in the profits spawned by the latter's discriminatory conduct. See Barrios-Velazquez, 84 F.3d at 494. The caveats are these. First, this factor implicates only profits arising from the challenged conduct, rather than from the relationship as a whole. See id.; Ponce, 760 F.2d at 382. Second, for profit-sharing to be relevant, the challenged conduct must be indispensable to the financial success of the joint project. See Burton, 365 U.S. at 723-24; Ponce, 760 F.2d at 381-82. This tracks nicely with the use/rationing distinction, because government is more likely to ration its facilities to favor a private entity when the private entity's profits are indispensable to the government's anticipated return from the project.
32 Here, the appellant posits that the Town's sanctioning requirements and control over scheduling constitute impermissible rationing and, thus, joint participation. The district court disagreed, and so do we. 33 As the appellant constructs it, this argument emphasizes Sanctioning Requirement No. 3 (which stipulates that, as a condition to sanctioned status, an organization must represent that there is no other sanctioned program in existence that offers the same or similar program). In her view, this requirement ensures monopoly status and excludes competing groups from the use of Town facilities. The record, however, belies this conclusion. 34 In the first place, the nisi prius roll is bereft of any evidence that other youth basketball programs have been deterred from attempting to secure sanctioning or to obtain gym time. Absent such a showing, the most that can be said is that LBC took advantage of an opportunity that the Town made available to all organizations of its type. Conduct that involves no more than seizing a widely available opportunity offered by the State will not justify a finding of impermissible rationing. See Sherman, 8 F.3d at 1167; Magill, 516 F.2d at 1335. 35 In the second place, the record reflects that both sanctioned and non-sanctioned groups actually use the gyms. Although sanctioned groups theoretically receive priority in scheduling, this fact alone, without proof of adverse effects, does not amount to the type of rationing that constitutes state action. See Magill, 516 F.2d at 1335 (explaining that facility-use decisions, in and of themselves, did not significantly involve[] the state in [the athletic conference's] gender policy). 36 Going beyond the sanctioning requirements, the appellant maintains that Fortin controls our resolution of her claim. In that case, we held that a Little League's heavy and preferred dependency upon city facilities justified a finding of joint participation. 514 F.2d at 347. But Fortin involved a much different scenario. There, the city laid out and maintained recreational facilities (baseball diamonds and their accouterments) primarily for the benefit of the Little League. See id. During the baseball season, the Little League preempted the facilities five nights per week and on Saturdays, vastly restricting other groups' access to them, to the point that other users often were precluded from all practical access. See id. In contrast, the Town's gyms are used primarily for school purposes and, after hours, are frequented by an array of other groups (e.g., volleyball teams, men's basketball teams), including but not limited to LBC. Thus, Fortin does not advance the appellant's cause. Her rationing argument therefore fails. 37 The appellant next proposes that a symbiotic relationship exists because the Town knowingly shares in profits generated by the challenged conduct (i.e., the same-sex tournament rule). In advancing this proposal, the appellant seizes upon testimony that links LBC's same-sex rule to its desire to maximize participation in its tournament. Building on this foundation, the appellant asserts that, by maximizing participation, the rule simultaneously maximizes LBC's profits and therefore maximizes the Town's profits. Passing the fact that the appellant unveils this assertion for the first time on appeal (and it is, therefore, procedurally defaulted, see Campos-Orrego v. Rivera, 175 F.3d 89, 95 (1st Cir. 1999)), the piling of inference upon inference does not prove the appellant's point. We explain briefly. 38 Even if maximization of participation can by some alchemy be converted, without proof, into maximization of LBC's profits, the record contains nothing which indicates that the Town knowingly shared in any incremental revenues that were so generated. The mere fact that, over the years, LBC donated some $22,000 to the Town -- a relatively small percentage of the total funds that it raised 6 -- does not suffice to bind the Town's gain to the same-sex tournament rule. See Barrios-Velazquez, 84 F.3d at 494. Nor does the record permit a finding that the rule was indispensable to the Town's success vis-a-vis the venture. Assuming, arguendo, that repealing the rule would shrink LBC's revenues, there is no basis for a finding that LBC's donations to the Town also would shrink, let alone that they would diminish so drastically as to undermine the Town's approval of LBC's use of public school gymnasia. From aught that appears, LBC's largesse has not been based on a percentage of funds raised at the tournament or on any other formula pegged to tournament revenues. And without factual support for the conclusory claim that the same-sex tournament rule (which the Town had no hand in propounding) is indispensable to the Town's success anent the venture, the profit-sharing rationale will not wash. See Burton, 365 U.S. at 723-24. 39 Finally, the appellant labors to demonstrate that LBC is not independent in the conduct of its everyday affairs. She does not succeed. Sanctioning by the Town does not evince an insinuation of the Town into LBC's ordinary course of day-to-day business; instead, sanctioning represents the Town's attempt to administer its own resources for the benefit of its residents. In all events, LBC's purview is not confined to the one-week life span of tournament play. Rather, it administers and coordinates teams of youngsters throughout a lengthy season and performs all the pre-season preparation that such an undertaking invariably entails. The Town simply is not involved to any meaningful degree in those myriad activities. Moreover, what the appellant perceives as an interlock between LBC and the Recreation Commission does not alter this decisional calculus. While two LBC directors serve as members of the Recreation Commission, and Commission members assist at the annual one-week tournament by performing menial tasks, such discrete incidents of assistance do not constitute municipal involvement in the daily management of LBC's affairs. See Evans, 382 U.S. at 301; United Auto Workers, 43 F.3d at 908. 40 The short of it is that we find in this case the coordination of efforts that often characterizes the operation of private youth groups at public schools, but no significantly probative evidence, Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249-50 (1986), that the Town and the private entity have become so joined at the hip that a symbiotic relationship persists. To the precise contrary, the facts, though we have viewed them in the light most congenial to the appellant, do not warrant a finding of joint participation to the degree needed to sustain a claim of state action.