March 29, 2012

Free Speech and Publicly Financed Stadiums

Sometimes baseball blogger Matt Welch wonders if you can say anything you want at a publicly financed stadium. He quotes the New York Times:

[T]he legal precedents […] are hard to come by, perhaps for two contrasting reasons, lawyers said. Fans who might have good cases for seemingly unjust ejections are rarely arrested; they are only removed from the event. They may be upset afterward but not aggrieved enough to follow through with a lengthy lawsuit. The other reason is that when a fan does file a civil suit over an ejection, it is almost always settled before a trial because team owners and arena owners fear a landmark case establishing fans’ rights.

“Imagine if a higher court took on such a case?” said Mark Conrad, an associate professor of sports law at Fordham University’s School of Business. “Facility owners would be quaking over anything like that because it could open the floodgates.”

Then gets in a nice shot at the sports establishment:

Public subsidies, tax breaks, and eminent domain takings on behalf of professional sports franchises constitute one of the most egregious and persistent strains of bipartisan corporate welfare in this country, as Reason has been telling you for decades. It would make my heart do an Ozzie Smith backflip to see the Selig/Paulsons of the world get bitten on the ass–through a free-speech challenge, no less!–for fattening up on the public teat.

It strikes me that Matt is exactly the sort of person who could make this work. The city of Anaheim contributed $30 million to the renovations of Angels Stadium, home of Matt’s favorite team. Matt could get himself thrown out a game for heckling Vernon Wells, then sue! (Of course, he might win on the grounds that Wells deserves heckling, which soft of defeats the whole purpose.) Come on, Matt, go for it!

3 thoughts on “Free Speech and Publicly Financed Stadiums

  1. rbj

    Interesting idea. The Mud Hens stadium was publicly financed and is publicly owned. But before every game they show a clip of Jamie Farr saying basically you’ll get tossed for certain words. When I worked at U. South Carolina (public university) at went to their baseball games, the announcement was about vulgar & racist language not being tolerated.

    Now usually a private business (say Wal-mart) gets tax breaks to come to town. (leaving aside the issue of the town being responsible for building the road up to the plot of land & running utility lines.) That is a form of public financing that’s available to a new business, and not an old one. (say a K-mart that’s been around for 50 years). But there I think Wal-mart would be able to control language used by customers. They already have to with employees for harassment laws.

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  2. pft

    I never realized you could get ejected for getting on an umpire or player w/o using obscenities or racist comments. Bill James article linked to in the story had a comment on how you could be ejected from getting on a player like Pujols.

    Don’t go to all that many games, but that’s awful.

    Stalin used to say they had free speech in the Soviet Union, but that the main difference with the US was what happened after you exercised your right to free speech. Sounds like MLB parks are the same.

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  3. jjackflash

    I don’t think public financing is really the key; there are all kinds of private developments which receive some kind of financing, or tax break, but that isn’t really the inquiry when it comes to 1st Amendment rights. The issue is the forum itself. If it’s government property (e.g., a municipally-owned stadium such as the Big A), then it’s a public forum. Even then, the Angels have a lease, which gives them exclusive rights to the place (at least during Angels games).

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