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2025 | Spring Issue

Strive

Horseracing regulators. Baseball stadiums built on stolen land. Title IX changing college campuses. These are stories about what happens when the government meddles in sports.

Because of its significance to many of our lives, sports are subject to endless government intervention. As you read this Sword&Scales, you’ll learn more about the passionate people in the sporting world who, when knocked around by an overzealous and often-unconstitutional bureaucracy, show their resolve and determination to play another play. Teamed up with Pacific Legal Foundation, we’re confident they’ll all eventually put a W on the board.

– Steven D. Anderson, President & CEO of Pacific Legal Foundation

what’s inside

A New Horse in the Race

Frank Garrison

Disqualified.  Four days after a 2024 horse race in New Mexico, Oscar Ceballos, the jockey who’d placed second, got bad news: He’d been disqualified, suspended, and fined $800. The horse he’d ridden, Alotaluck, would be recorded as “unplaced” in the race and disqualified from the $85,360 purse (the prize money).   Ceballos had apparently broken a […]

When the Government Takes Private Property for Sports Stadiums

James S. Burling

Willie Mays was out at home plate.  It was August 10, 1955, and the New York Giants were playing a night game against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, the Dodgers’ worn-down stadium in Flatbush. The bases were loaded at the top of the fifth with Mays, the Giants’ star centerfielder, on first. The Giants […]

Sorry, the Gym Is Closed

Jon Houghton

Brittany Hunter

Helping Americans stay fit and healthy has always been a passion for Yvette Franco-Clark and her husband Randy Clark. Few people are fortunate to take what they love and turn it into a profitable business. But in 2019, the couple had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy their own local gym in Alma, Michigan.   Owning a […]

The Strange Story of Title IX 

Alison Somin

The newspaper quote is surprisingly diplomatic for a man named Moose.  “We have no desire to discriminate against women,” Edward “Moose” Krause, the longtime athletic director at the University of Notre Dame, told The New York Times in 1979. “But we’re not sure exactly what we’re supposed to do to comply with the new Title […]

A Surfer Caught Inside a Legal Nightmare 

Caleb R. Trotter

When a surfer gets trapped between an incoming wave and the shore, it’s said he’s been “caught inside.” Surfers dread being caught inside. You can’t escape—you can only try not to panic—as the wave comes toward you. It’s inevitable. You’re going to be pushed down by a force far bigger than you are.  In a […]

The MMA Fighter Who Loves the Constitution 

Joseph Kast

I’ve never been athletic. My only team sports experience was the crucial role of waterboy for my high school rugby team. A few years ago, I was with my wife en route to a Fourth of July party. We stopped by a 7-Eleven to pick up some drinks. A heavy-set and heavily inebriated man was […]
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Stories of liberty and justice

Sword&Scales is a quarterly magazine with in-depth stories about liberty, equality, and justice. Published by Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm with a winning record at the Supreme Court, Sword&Scales features narratives from history, courtroom showdowns, and the real experiences of people fighting for their rights.

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