After the NFL announced Wednesday that its players on the field must stand respectfully for the national anthem or face fines – or remain in locker rooms until the anthem is over — two questions linger: Can the NFL legally require its players to stand? Do the players have any viable legal recourse?
The answers depend on who you ask.
“It is truly an open question whether the NFL’s rule is legal,” said Dr. Alvin Tillery, an associate professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University.
“Under standard interpretations of the First Amendment, workers do not have an absolute right to engage in protest speech at work,” explained Tillery, whose research focuses on American political development, racial and ethnic politics and media and politics.
“On the other side of the coin, it seems pretty clear that what the NFL is trying to do here is compel patriotic speech from its workers. That is really testable in a court of law. It is also questionable because NFL games take place in publicly funded stadiums. So there is a real argument that teams, as private-public entities, must respect the First Amendment.”
President Donald Trump’s public spat with kneeling NFL players over the kneeling issue has been well documented. At a political rally in September in Huntsville, Ala., he called kneeling players “sons of bitches” and suggested that perhaps owners should fire them.
In an interview that aired Thursday on “Fox and Friends” on the Fox News channel, Trump said the NFL was “doing the right thing.”
