Opinion ID: 2973521
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Brentwood Gave Up its Right to Certain Speech

Text: In this case Brentwood gave up some of its free speech rights when it signed a one-year contract agreeing to abide by TSSAA’s game rules, including its anti-recruiting rules. Brentwood’s promise is not materially different from the CIA’s employment agreement or the speech restrictions on the Rust staff employees. In each of these situations, the promisors agreed not to speak in certain ways in return for something they desired. Brentwood’s waiver was doubtless knowing, voluntary, and intelligent. The anti-recruiting rule and supplemental materials explicitly forbade Coach Flatt from “contact[ing] a student or his or her parents prior to his enrollment in the school.” Brentwood Acad. v. Tenn. Secondary Sch. Athletic Ass’n, 262 F.3d 543, 549 (6th Cir. 2001). Nothing could be clearer, and Coach Flatt did exactly this. His waiver—and his violation of this crystal clear rule—were voluntary, knowing, and intelligent. Moreover, there is no evidence on the record that would suggest that Brentwood had agreed to TSSAA’s rules involuntarily or without knowledge. That Brentwood, a sophisticated and tenacious party, never contested in this appeal that it understood the anti-recruiting rules tells volumes about the intelligence of its waiver. Nos. 03-5245/5278 Brentwood Acad. v. Tenn. Secondary Page 30 Sch. Athletic Ass’n et al. 3. Brentwood’s Waiver Has No Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine Defect Brentwood’s waiver does not run afoul of the “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine because the anti-recruiting rules relate to participation in TSSAA athletics and Coach Flatt’s recruiting letter and follow-up phone calls do not bear on matters of public concern. “Under the well-settled doctrine of ‘unconstitutional conditions,’ the government may not require a person to give up a constitutional right . . . in exchange for a discretionary benefit conferred by the government where the benefit sought has little or no relationship to the” right surrendered. Dolan v. City of Tigard, 512 U.S. 374, 385 (1994) (citing Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593 (1972); Pickering v. Bd. of Educ., 391 U.S. 563, 568 (1968)). When the free speech rights of government employees are at issue, this doctrine prevents the surrender of speech rights only if the speech bears on some matter of public concern. Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138, 146 (1983). In this case the unconstitutional conditions doctrine will invalidate Brentwood’s waiver only if Brentwood’s membership in TSSAA has “little or no relationship” to the free speech rights surrendered (i.e., to the anti-recruiting rules); or if, applying the Connick standard, Coach Flatt’s recruiting speech bore on a matter of public concern. The anti-recruiting rules relate to participation in TSSAA and limit no speech on any matter of public concern. By limiting Coach Flatt’s right to recruit unenrolled middle-school students for the football team, the anti-recruiting rules regulate the formation of teams that compete in TSSAA. It is an off-the-field regulation thought to enhance the quality of on-the-field competition by promoting equity in the relative strength of teams. The anti-recruiting rules, therefore, have a clear relationship, not “little or no relationship,” to participation in TSSAA. Obviously, there is no reason to think that Coach Flatt’s recruiting letter or follow-up phone calls touch upon any matter of public concern under Connick. Consequently, there is no unconstitutional conditions doctrine defect in Brentwood’s agreement to comply with recruitment rules. There is no reason to limit the Connick no-public-concern analysis strictly to government employee cases. Connick is analogous because the restriction on Brentwood’s recruiting speech emanates from the necessity of limiting game participants’ speech as part of the competitor-referee relationship. Cf. Maj. Op. at 8 (observing that lawful restrictions on government employees’ speech emanate from the necessity of limiting their speech as part of the employer-employee relationship). The operation of a sports league demands speech limits that are germane to the agreed-upon venture no less than does employment. To extend an earlier analogy, a government employee harms the employer-employee relationship when he exercises his First Amendment right to read the newspaper for his entire workday. Likewise, Coach Flatt harmed the competitor-referee relationship between Brentwood and TSSAA when he disobeyed anti-recruiting rules that others were presumably following. Brentwood’s promise to follow the anti-recruiting rules has no unconstitutional conditions doctrine defect because it has a relationship to Brentwood’s participation in TSSAA and limits no speech of public concern. Brentwood’s First Amendment claims should be dismissed. 4. Our 2001 Opinion Leaves Open the Possibility That Brentwood Gave Up Those Free Speech Rights That Might Interfere With TSSAA Game Rules In my view, this court’s 2001 opinion does not at all foreclose the foregoing argument. Compare Maj. Op. at 7; Brentwood Acad. v. Tenn. Secondary Sch. Athletic Ass’n, 262 F.3d 543, 550 (6th Cir. 2001). The 2001 opinion on the contrary rejected a different and overly broad theory of waiver: that Brentwood had given up its right to sue entirely. See id. The 2001 opinion noted that Nos. 03-5245/5278 Brentwood Acad. v. Tenn. Secondary Page 31 Sch. Athletic Ass’n et al. the cases cited by TSSAA in support of this overly broad waiver theory involved parties that had explicitly “waived their right to sue,” and concluded that “[t]here is no comparable TSSAA provision prohibiting members from challenging the constitutionality of the recruiting rule.” Id. (emphasis added). In other words, the 2001 opinion says only that Brentwood did not waive its right to sue generally. That is true. While retaining its right to sue generally, Brentwood waived a more limited group of rights—including any free speech-related theories that would invalidate the normal administration of rules that Brentwood agreed to, including the anti-recruiting rules. Brentwood could for instance sue on the basis of the unconstitutional conditions doctrine and indeed this court relied upon such cases in our rejection of the blanket waiver argument. See id. By analogy, the staff personnel in Rust did not waive their right to sue about their employment conditions or free speech rights generally. Surely a court could have heard a political discrimination claim brought against the government funding authority by any such staff members. Yet the Court still held that the staff members, by accepting employment, waived First Amendment objections to Title X’s abortion-speech restrictions. See Rust, 500 U.S. at 199 (“employees’ freedom of expression is limited during the time that they actually work for the project; but this limitation is a consequence of their decision to accept employment in a project, the scope of which is permissibly restricted by the funding authority”). In this case, Brentwood waived only speech rights that would interfere with its agreement to abide by TSSAA’s game rules and that did not violate the unconstitutional conditions doctrine. The 2001 opinion never addressed this narrower theory of waiver and thus does not foreclose any and all arguments based on waiver. Brentwood waived its right to have Coach Flatt contact as yet unenrolled students. Its First Amendment claim should be dismissed on that ground.