Blogger's ejection may mean suit for NCAA

The eviction of a newspaper reporter from a baseball press box for blogging about a game while it was in progress has stirred a debate about First Amendment rights, intellectual property rights and contract law.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association, which on Sunday ejected Brian Bennett of The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., during the Louisville-Oklahoma State game at Jim Patterson Stadium in Louisville, contends it is merely enforcing long-established principles as they apply to a new technology.

But the newspaper is weighing a legal challenge on First Amendment grounds--the right to free speech as it applies to reporting news in a public place.

Jon Fleischaker, a lawyer representing The Courier-Journal, said Wednesday that such a challenge might be made, within the next 10 days, because the event took place at a public facility and because the eviction was enforced by the University of Louisville, a public institution that was the host university.

"We're just not sure whether there is enough official state action to properly be able to say there's a First Amendment claim," Fleischaker said in a telephone interview. "We're doing some work to see who's on first."

Scott Bearby, associate general counsel for the NCAA, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that the dispute "doesn't really have a First Amendment angle to it" and that the NCAA had a right to protect the contracts it establishes with television networks and its own Internet providers.