Three of the four San Francisco Giants pitchers who protested the team’s Pride Night rainbow hats last week, citing their Christian beliefs, likely are not protected by religious exemption laws, a former National Labor Relations Board chairman told the Chronicle on Friday.
Scribbling a bible verse on their team hats adorned with a rainbow “SF” designed to celebrate the LGBTQ community violated Major League Baseball’s rules on altering uniforms, said Bill Gould, a Stanford law professor emeritus who played a crucial role in ending the MLB strike in the 1990s and has mediated more than 300 labor disputes. Baseball and professional sports teams carry different standards than your typical workplace, he said.
“I would say (the Giants) are not running afoul of the religious exemption,” Gould said. “Sports and baseball are in a different situation. Here a uniform is something that the name implies — uniform … This is a team sport and the public and fans are interested in it because it involves cohesion.”
The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday opened a civil rights investigation into MLB, asserting the league may have discriminated against the Giants pitchers on religious grounds after Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker all wrote a Bible verse on their team-issued caps adjacent to the rainbow team insignia. A fourth pitcher, Sam Hentges, simply wore the regular Giants hat with the standard Giants logo.
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