Selling the Name on the Schoolhouse Gate: The First Amendment and the Sale of Public School Naming Rights

In the past five years, the sale of naming rights to public school events and facilities has grown from fodder for humor columnists into a nationwide, multimillion-dollar enterprise. And although commercialism in schools is nothing new, granting naming rights to public school facili- ties in exchange for remuneration raises novel and difficult First Amendment problems that schools and their attorneys will find increasingly difficult to ignore.