Opening Major League Baseball clubhouses to women reporters

It was Oct. 18, 1977. I was a new associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. The Yankees were playing the Dodgers in game six of the World Series at Yankee Stadium. A legal battle was brewing over access to the team clubhouses for post-game player interviews.

Sports Illustrated had assigned reporter Melissa Ludtke to help baseball writer Ron Fimrite cover the 1977 World Series. She had assumed that she would have access to the clubhouses at Yankee Stadium as she had during the American League playoff games. But a representative of Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn had told her in the middle of game one that she could not enter either clubhouse, because baseball was not ready for a woman reporter in the locker room.

Time Inc., publisher of Sports Illustrated, had retained Cravath to challenge Kuhn’s ban. Partner Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Jr. was in charge. Associate Catherine Raymond (now Catherine Flickinger) and I, both recent graduates of Columbia Law School, comprised the rest of the team.

Excluding Ludtke from the clubhouses because she was a woman was subject to intermediate scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To be lawful, a gender-based classification “must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.” (Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 197 (1976).)

Because Ludtke’s claim arose under the Fourteenth Amendment, we would be suing under 42 U.S.C. section 1983. That meant she had to have been excluded “under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage” of the government, the “state action” requirement. Major league baseball, the Yankees, and the Dodgers were private organizations. But Yankee Stadium was owned by the City of New York, which leased it to the Yankees, who ceded control to the Commissioner during the World Series. In Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715 (1961), the Supreme Court had ruled that a private restaurant that leased its premises from a state parking garage could not refuse to serve African American customers. Because the restaurant was an integral part of a public building, maintained with public funds, the state could be considered a “joint participant” in the operation of the restaurant. Likewise, the City of New York should be considered a participant in the exclusion of Ludtke.

As the Yankees and Dodgers played game six (with the Yankees up 3-2), we were getting ready to file our challenge to the ban the next day. But Reggie Jackson had other ideas. He hit three home runs (earning the title of Mr. October), as the Yankees beat the Dodgers and won the series.

Because she was banned from the clubhouse, Ludtke could not see the Yankees’ celebration, nor interview the players right after the game. Although the Commissioner’s office had assigned a male liaison to bring players to her in the hallway outside the clubhouse, the arrangement did not work. In a memo she wrote two days later, Ludtke described her experience:

“At about 12:20 (approximately an hour and a half after I first requested to talk to Reggie) Reggie Jackson came out of the locker room to talk to me. As I said it was impossible to conduct an interview that in any way would resemble the hour and a half of dialogue that I had missed while I stood in the corridor.”

“So while millions of women watched the clubhouse scene on television, I stood outside the clubhouse—unable to report on the events which women across the country were seeing.”

But the battle was not over. We filed a complaint in the Southern District of New York on Dec. 29, 1977. Ludtke v. Kuhn, Case No. 77 Civ. 6301 (CBM). It was randomly assigned to Judge Constance Baker Motley, who had worked with Thurgood Marshall on Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

We collected sworn statements from male and female journalists to show that access to the clubhouse was crucial to Ludtke’s job as a reporter. For example:

Roger Angell, writer for The New Yorker and author of four books on baseball, explained: “The sounds and sights of the clubhouse itself—tomblike after a mid-season loss, tumultuous and champagne-drenched after a great season-ending or Series-ending victory—are an essential story in themselves.”

Washington Post reporter Betty Cuniberti said that she missed a story about an Oakland A’s player saying that he would never play for the team’s owner again because she was relegated to a tunnel outside the clubhouse.

New York Daily News reporter Lawrie Mifflin was able to write about Pele’s emotional reaction in the locker room following his last competitive game for the New York Cosmos, only because she had locker room access.

Elie Abel, Dean of Columbia’s School of Journalism, worried that not allowing women reporters the same access to baseball clubhouses as male reporters would discourage women from entering the field, and harm their professional careers.

We filed a summary judgment motion on March 17, 1978, which Judge Motley heard on April 14. Baseball’s lawyers argued that player privacy was in jeopardy, that male reporters would have a harder time doing their jobs if baseball allowed women in the clubhouses, and that baseball’s image and revenue would be damaged.

That September, as the 1978 baseball playoffs were about to begin, Judge Motley granted the motion. Denying Ludtke the same access as male reporters violated her right to equal protection, and her liberty interest in the pursuit of her profession. Although protecting players’ privacy was an important objective, there were alternatives to exclusion. For example, the players could wait to undress until the reporters left, curtains could be placed in front of their cubicles, or they could wear towels when walking to the showers. Baseball’s concern about its image and revenues was too insubstantial to merit serious consideration. Ludtke v. Kuhn, 461 F. Supp. 86 (S.D.N.Y. 1978). Melissa Ludtke was able to cover the 1978 World Series at Yankee Stadium with the same clubhouse access as male reporters.