Most reporting of the Incident has spent more time and lines

in rhetoric that inflames than facts that explain. This has

created confusion, disbelief, and passion about the issue of

rights which in 1978 was adequately determined in court.

The solution... shield all of the media from nudity.

 

There's nothing like a few legal facts to chill the passions

of the sexes who still take sides about the Incident.

 

Bowie Kuhn, the Commissioner of Baseball,

Leland MacPail, President of the American

League of Professional Baseball Clubs,

The New York Yankees Partnership,

The Mayor of New York,

The Commissioner of Parks and Recreation

for the City of New York, and

The Director of Economic Development Administration

of the City of New York,

Defendants

 

This case stares at the issue of women in men's locker rooms.

It determines that while perhaps the action of barring women

from locker rooms may be legitimate and substantial in

protecting male athletes' right to privacy, this purpose

cannot be pursued by means that broadly stifle fundamental

personal liberties (the right to pursue a profession) when

the end can be more narrowly achieved... i.e., build a wall.

The case did not conclude that men do not have a right to

their privacy and that women have a right to view naked men.

The cornerstone to the equality issue is to look at what the

reporters of the same gender as the athletes are doing and

where they are doing it. Within the 14th Amendment's due

process guarantee, the right to pursue one's profession is

considered a fundamental liberty. This is an equal right

While the Equal Rights Amendment, ERA, has not been ratified

by a sufficient number of states to amend the federal

constitution, individual states, of which Massachusetts is

one, have passed ERA amendments to their own constitutions.

Hence, by law, men have as equal a right to a women's locker

room as women to men's, providing that women reporters are

allowed into a women's locker room. (It should be noted that

even without the federal ERA, the federal courts are deciding

cases on an equal basis.)

 

And finally, if as a "gentleman" and "gentlewoman"  reporter

does not insist on his/her equal right, s/he on the other

hand does not lose that right.