Did Trump's tweet make it safer for NFL players to kneel for the anthem?
By Tracy Jan October 15 at 8:54 PM
The controversy over football players kneeling in protest during the national anthem could have simply remained a labor dispute within the NFL. But then President Trump tweeted that tax breaks should be revoked for a league that disrespects “our Anthem, Flag and Country.”
Those words threatening government action to financially penalize the league injected a new dimension into a roiling debate over race, police brutality and free speech that has gripped America’s most successful sports business for more than a year.
The National Football League is expected to decide this week whether to force players to stand for the national anthem. Legal experts say that NFL players, as employees of private teams, do not have First Amendment protections against the league and would not ordinarily be able to challenge that decision on free-speech grounds. But Trump’s intervention — through last week’s tweet and its implied threat that the government would change tax laws to hurt the NFL — could provide the players with a stronger legal basis for a free-speech challenge against the United States, some legal scholars said. Left unchecked, Trump as president could financially compel any number of companies and private entities to do exactly what he wants, they said.
“The biggest wild card of all here is the president’s tweets,” said Marc Edelman, who teaches sports law at Baruch College in New York. “The NFL didn’t publicly voice opposition until baited into doing so and being threatened with financial sanctions by the president of the United States.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/did-trumps-tweet-make-it-safer-for-nfl-players-to-kneel-for-the-anthem/2017/10/15/d99f20ca-af44-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html
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