I want to commend the Louisville Fox affiliate, WDRB-41, for its decision not to air, or even report on, its interview with Karen Sypher, the woman Louisville coach Rick Pitino asserts has attempted to extort him. According to an ESPN report late last night:
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In writing and speaking about fans’ speech rights, the speech part always has seemed, to me, easy–of course someone can wear a t-shirt reading “Yankees Suck” and of course someone can jeer a player for making an error. And of course someone cannot be compelled to participate in a patriotic ritual such as singing “God Bless America.” The harder part (at least at professional sporting events) has been whether the First Amendment is even in play when the controlling actor–the teams–are not obviously state actors. The lawsuit by the fan who was kicked out of Yankee Stadium in 2008 spends a lot of time in the Complaint trying to deal with, and overcome, that problem.
