Why player political protest should be part of U.S. professional sports

Journal of the Philosophy of Sport:1-16 (2024)
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Abstract

ABSTRACT‘Sports and politics don’t mix’. This platitude has been a pervasive part of U.S. professional sport culture, but it is vague and most of the versions are untrue since politics have been, and must be, a part of professional sports. Its only plausible meaning is that professional players should not make political statements while they are on-the-job. Players have a constitutional right to make political statements outside the workplace, but this right does not apply in privately owned sport associations. I argue that player political protest has ultimately been moral, not political, in nature and that players’ on-the-job political expression can be justified based on the priority of the moral-legal concept of personhood. I propose player political expression policies that U.S. professional associations should adopt.

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Lou Matz
University of the Pacific

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Normative Pluralism and Sporting Integrity.Cem Abanazir - forthcoming - Sport, Ethics and Philosophy:1-18.
Sport and Politics in the Twenty-First Century.Sandra Meeuwsen & Lev Kreft - 2022 - Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 17 (3):342-355.
Sport and Politics in the Twenty-First Century.Sandra Meeuwsen & Lev Kreft - 2022 - Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 17 (3):342-355.

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