PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin

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PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin

Argued January 17, 2001
Decided May 29, 2001


Full case name:	PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin

Citations:	532 U.S. 661
Prior history:	Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Subsequent history:	204 F. 3d 994, affirmed.

Holding

The PGA Tour is required to adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Rehnquist
Associate Justices: John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer

Case opinions

Majority by: Stevens
Joined by: Rehnquist, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Dissent by: Scalia
Joined by: Thomas

Laws applied

Americans with Disabilities Act

PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, 532 U.S. 661 (2001), was a Supreme Court case in which handicapped golfer Casey Martin asserted that the PGA Tour could not lawfully deny him the option to ride in a golf cart between shots. Prior to this case, the PGA Tour required all golfers to walk between shots, and argued that this policy constituted an important aspect of the game of golf. The Supreme Court found for Martin in a 7-2 decision.

[edit] Decision

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Martin in a 7-2 decision.

[edit] Dissent

The case is principally memorable^{[citation needed]} for its dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia, which included a section which ran:

If one assumes, however, that the PGA TOUR has some legal obligation to play classic, Platonic golf–and if one assumes the correctness of all the other wrong turns the Court has made to get to this point–then we Justices must confront what is indeed an awesome responsibility. It has been rendered the solemn duty of the Supreme Court of the United States, laid upon it by Congress in pursuance of the Federal Government’s power “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States,” to decide What Is Golf. I am sure that the Framers of the Constitution, aware of the 1457 edict of King James II of Scotland prohibiting golf because it interfered with the practice of archery, fully expected that sooner or later the paths of golf and government, the law and the links, would once again cross, and that the judges of this august Court would some day have to wrestle with that age-old jurisprudential question, for which their years of study in the law have so well prepared them: Is someone riding around a golf course from shot to shot really a golfer? The answer, we learn, is yes. The Court ultimately concludes, and it will henceforth be the Law of the Land, that walking is not a “fundamental” aspect of golf.

The dissent concludes with:

Complaints about this case are not “properly directed to Congress,” ante, at 27-28, n. 51. They are properly directed to this Court’s Kafkaesque determination that professional sports organizations, and the fields they rent for their exhibitions, are “places of public accommodation” to the competing athletes, and the athletes themselves “customers” of the organization that pays them; its Alice in Wonderland determination that there are such things as judicially determinable “essential” and “nonessential” rules of a made-up game; and its Animal Farm determination that fairness and the ADA mean that everyone gets to play by individualized rules which will assure that no one’s lack of ability (or at least no one’s lack of ability so pronounced that it amounts to a disability) will be a handicap. The year was 2001, and “everybody was finally equal.” K. Vonnegut, Harrison Bergeron, in Animal Farm and Related Readings 129 (1997).

In 2004, this dissent was nominated by popular blog The Volokh Conspiracy as one of the funniest Supreme Court decisions thusfar written.