Court Opinion

ID: 9472491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:02:01.899447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:58.086414
License: Public Domain

POSNER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the majority opinion. As that opinion explains, the legislative history of the Amateur Sports Act makes reasonably clear that Congress’s omission to provide for private enforcement of the Act was deliberate. The Senate’s original bill would have empowered the federal courts to enjoin the denial by any “sports organization” (which is broadly defined — probably broadly enough to embrace an international sports organization such as the International Weightlifting Federation) of an “eligible” amateur athlete’s opportunity to participate in an international athletic competition such as the Olympic Games. See S. 2036, 95th Cong., 1st Sess., §§ 302(d)(g), 303(a), 304(a). This grant of power was dropped from the final bill — and not through inadvertence, either. In explaining the decision to drop it, the Senate Report notes that “strong resistance” to giving athletes substantive rights had resulted in a compromise whereby “certain substantive provisions on athletes’ rights would be included in the USOC Constitution, and not in the bill.” S.Rep. No. 770, 95th Cong., 2d *159Sess. 6 (1978). Of course, if this “Constitution” were deemed a federal law, alleged deprivations of any athletes’ rights created by it could be litigated in federal court just as if the Senate had retained the provisions of the original bill. But this would defeat the compromise; and as an original matter it is reasonably clear that the federal government’s regulatory role in relation to the United States Olympic Committee would not make every dispute over the provisions of its constitution a dispute arising under federal law within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1331. See generally Bernstein v. Lind-Waldock & Co., 738 F.2d 179, 184-85 (7th Cir.1984). Any doubt on this score can be dispelled by the reflection that there can be few less suitable bodies than the federal courts for determining the eligibility, or the procedures for determining the eligibility, of athletes to participate in the Olympic Games.
I write separately, however, because there is another ground for reversal that I find as compelling as the one in the majority opinion. The only relevant duty imposed by the Act is the duty of the United States Olympic Committee to establish procedures for resolving disputes “involving any of its members and relating to the opportunity of an amateur athlete ... to participate in the Olympic Games ____” 36 U.S.C. § 382b. Michels’ dispute relates to the opportunity of an amateur athlete to participate in the Olympic Games but does not involve any of the members of the United States Olympic Committee. His dispute is with the International Weightlifting Federation, an international organization that is not a member of the USOC. He has no dispute with the United States Weightlifting Federation, which is a member. It is the International Weightlifting Federation that has suspended him from international competition, not the U.S. Weightlifting Federation, which backed his unsuccessful effort to get the suspension lifted and backed off only when the international federation proved adamant. Although Michels named the U.S. Weightlifting Federation as a defendant, the question is not whether he might be able to get some kind of ancillary relief against the USWF in this lawsuit (if the Amateur Sports Act could be privately enforced), but whether he had a dispute with the USWF that the U.S. Olympic Committee did not act to resolve; only then would it be possible to argue that the USOC had violated a duty that section 382b lays on it. But Michels has no dispute with the U.S. Weightlifting Federation that the USOC failed to resolve. His dispute was with the nonmember, the international federation, and it was outside the scope of section 382b.
It is not by accident that the statute does not require the U.S. Olympic Committee to establish machinery for resolving disputes between athletes and nonmembers. See also 36 U.S.C. § 375(a)(5); H.R.Rep. No. 1627, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 15 (1978), U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 1978, p. 7478. The USOC has no control over nonmembers. The International Weightlifting Federation can thumb its collective nose at the U.S. Olympic Committee. It can do more: if the USOC tried to put Michels on the U.S. Olympic Weightlifting team in defiance of the IWF’s expulsion, the IWF could ask the International Olympic Committee to disqualify the team. Michels might succeed only in destroying the Olympic hopes of all the American weightlifters.
To resolve disputes, you must have power over the disputants. That is why section 382b confines the USOC’s duty of dispute resolution to disputes between athletes and members of the USOC. Even if section 382b could be enforced by a private suit, this suit would have to be dismissed for failure to state a claim.