Santa Clara official fired after tirade directed at 49ers employees

Brian Doyle, the Santa Clara city attorney who allegedly went on a tirade against San Francisco 49ers employees that was “wild, unstable and suggestive of violence,” was fired by the City Council on Wednesday.

The council voted 5-2 to terminate Doyle with no cause. After his removal, Doyle told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Jed York wanted my head on a silver platter, and he got it.” (SFGATE and the San Francisco Chronicle are both owned by Hearst but operate independently of one another.)

A quick refresher on the Doyle saga: In April, the 49ers informed the city of Santa Clara that team employees would no longer meet with Doyle after the team grew “troubled over the last couple of years with reports from employees of being yelled at or being forced to listen to lengthy, volatile rants by Mr. Doyle.”

According to the 49ers, Doyle “crossed a line” during an April 15 Zoom meeting in which Doyle reportedly said the team wanted him to “sleep with the fishes” and blasted the “thugs” team employees work for.

Doyle later issued a statement of his own accusing the 49ers of making “false and defamatory” statements about him. He said that City Councilman Suds Jain once noted that the 49ers “wanted [him] gone,” which he took as a threat.

In response to Doyle’s most recent “Jed York wanted my head on a silver platter” comment, a 49ers spokesperson told the Chronicle, “We are disappointed but not surprised by Mr. Doyle’s alarming claims on his way out the door. Ultimately he wasted $6 million in taxpayer money in his failed litigation against voters’

rights. The 49ers were on the other side of that fight, and we are not surprised he harbors ill will.”

The “failed litigation against voters’ rights” line is a reference to Doyle’s handling of a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit against the city that was eventually settled. Doyle led the city’s defense and was reportedly blamed by city officials after more than $5 million in legal fees resulted in the settlement.

Doyle had other controversies in his tenure but became one of the faces of the city’s high-profile disputes with the 49ers. Of the five City Council members who voted to remove Doyle, three were elected in 2020 after York spent nearly $3 million on an independent committee backing their campaigns.