Sage Steele and ESPN have ended their working relationship and their litigation.
On Tuesday, the SportsCenter anchor wrote on Twitter that she has “successfully settled” her “case with ESPN/Disney,” while ESPN issued a statement saying the network and Steele “have mutually agreed to part ways.”
Steele, 50, added that her decision to leave is based on her desire to “exercise my [F]irst [A]mendment rights more freely.”
Last year, Steele sued ESPN in a Connecticut Superior Court for breach of contract, bad faith, infliction of emotional distress and violation of a unique Connecticut statute that makes it illegal for employers to discipline employees for constitutionally protected speech.
Steele argued that although she wasn’t fired, suspended, fined or otherwise disciplined, ESPN nonetheless downgraded her prominence and forced her to publicly apologize after she made controversial comments about former President Barack Obama and COVID-19 vaccines.
During a September 2021 podcast of Uncut with Jay Cutler, Steele suggested that Obama, whose mother, Ann Dunham, was white and who was largely raised by Dunham, doesn’t count as “black.” She also ridiculed ESPN’s pandemic-era policy requiring that employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.
In court filings, ESPN lambasted the lawsuit as meritless, in part because it never took adverse employment action against Steele, who was not docked pay or benefits or barred from entering the workplace. ESPN also insisted that, as a private...
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