Summary
A grievance filed by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick says his inability to find work, despite six solid seasons in the National Football League, is because of collusion against him by NFL owners — with President Trump’s encouragement — for kneeling during the national anthem to protest police violence against African Americans.
When a skilled professional athlete is suddenly and persistently unemployed while his former team flounders and rivals make do with less-accomplished reserves, blaming his status on a collective freeze-out does not seem far-fetched. But in the legal forum that will judge Kaepernick’s complaint, it can be extremely difficult to prove.
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Kaepernick, like Bonds, “will have to show some kind of communication, some kind of meeting” to prove collusion, said William Gould, a Stanford law professor, who is chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board and former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board.
Collusion might be inferred if Kaepernick’s lawyers could show that 29 or 30 of the 32 NFL teams had turned him away, and that there was a “common thread” to their actions, said Gould, who has written extensively on sports law. But even such a showing wouldn’t be enough to prove the former quarterback’s case, said Marc Edelman, a law professor at the City University of New York who specializes in sports law.
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