Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Frozen In Time: The State Action Doctrine's Application To Amateur Sports, Dionne L. Koller

All Faculty Scholarship

The state action doctrine has as its central goal the preservation of liberty by limiting the intrusion of the government into the "private" sphere. It achieves this by applying the Constitution only to government, and not private, action. Traditionally, amateur sports regulators such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) have been viewed by courts as private. As a result, this article explains that courts generally give great deference to amateur sports organizations such as the NCAA and USOC to regulate sports with little judicial interference, including in the area of constitutional litigation. …