Mr. Sheehan, a retired glazier, has held season tickets for the San Francisco 49ers since 1967. But when he and his family showed up at the stadium on a fall day in 2005, guards at the gate told him that all visitors had to go through a physical search. Though he had never objected to searches of bags, he said, the pat-down “just hit me wrong.”

When his 5-year-old grandson spread his arms for the search, he recalled, “I thought, wait a minute! We’re still living in the United States of America.”

On Tuesday the California Supreme Court will hear the case that Mr. Sheehan brought over the search policy, which was instituted in stadiums across the National Football League.