NFL, Kaepernick agree to settle collusion suit
Former 49ers quarterback and Reid protested police shootings of blacks by kneeling during anthem
Quarterback Colin Kaepernick ignited impassioned debates over race, activism and free expression after protesting police shootings of black men by kneeling during “The Star-Spangled Banner” at National Football League games.
The president tweeted his anger at him and dozens of other players who also knelt in protest during the national anthem. Some fans boycotted games over the players’ actions, and some boycotted the NFL with the belief that Kaepernick, who failed to land a job the next season, was being blacklisted for his leadership in the movement.
Kaepernick and a former teammate, Eric Reid, filed a legal case accusing the NFL of colluding to keep them out of the league. Now, after 2½ years, the parties have reached a surprise legal settlement.
In a terse joint statement, the league and the players’ lawyers said that “the parties have decided to resolve the pending grievances” and that “there will be no further comment.”
A confidentiality agreement means that, for all the debate and discussion the case generated, it ended with a silence that left hanging whether the league admitted there was any collusion and whether Kaepernick would ever play another down.
Kaepernick, 31, who played for the San Francisco 49ers and took them to the Super Bowl after the 2012 season, has not played in the NFL since the 2016 season, when he began the kneeling campaign. (At first he sat during the anthem, but a former player who is a veteran suggested he kneel instead to make his point while respecting the American flag.)
He filed a grievance under the league’s collective bargaining agreement in October 2017, months after failing to find a job, and his lawyers have been busy gathering evidence and testimony from numerous NFL owners and league executives.
The case seemed headed to a ruling this spring by an arbitrator, until the abrupt statement Friday that left the sports world guessing on whether the league paid the players and how much.
After playing for the 49ers, Reid also went unsigned for a period before playing last season for the Carolina Panthers. This week he signed a three-year contract with the team.
The settlement of their case was another
unpredictable twist in a saga that began in August 2016 when Kaepernick, an African-American little known as an activist, began his protests during the anthem.
He said the gesture was meant to draw attention to racism and police brutality against people of color.
Several players across the league joined him in kneeling during the anthem, generating a national discussion over it and leaving the league flummoxed over how to respond. Last year the NFL instituted a policy that said that players could remain in the locker room during the playing of the national anthem, but that if they were on the field they would have to stand.
But that policy was suspended after the NFL Players Association filed a grievance, and it was never enforced.
The sideline protest movement seemed to lose momentum, and few players knelt this past season. Kaepernick has said little, reserving most of his comments to his social media accounts. During the Super Bowl this month he posted on his Instagram account pictures of athletes and celebrities wearing jerseys supporting his cause.
On Friday, he only retweeted a statement from his lawyer, Mark Geragos.
Kaepernick emerged from the protests as both a polarizing figure and a cultural symbol.
Last year, Nike signed him to a lucrative endorsement deal even though he remained out of the league and largely silent.
It is unclear whether Kaepernick will continue to attempt to play professional football again.
Legal experts have said collusion cases are notoriously difficult to prove, which makes it highly unusual for the league to settle a case like this. It is possible Kaepernick’s lawyers had gathered enough evidence and testimony from owners, league officials and football experts that Kaepernick stood a reasonable chance of persuading the arbitrator hearing the case to rule in his favor.
Had Kaepernick won his case in a full hearing, he would have been eligible to receive the money he might have earned if he were signed as a free agent. The damages would be doubled. In his final year with the 49ers, Kaepernick earned more than $14 million.
Carl Tobias, an expert on civil litigation who teaches at the University of Richmond School of Law, said that parties settle for all sorts of reasons, even when they believe they may prevail in court.
But the NFL, he said, most likely wanted to move on from the issue rather than risk an adverse ruling that could taint negotiations over the league’s collective bargaining agreement, which will expire in two seasons.
“I think the NFL just wanted to get this behind them and not have this threat hanging over them,” Tobias said. “I think they’d pay whatever they’d get away with to stop the hemorrhaging and the negative light on the league.”
According to the collective bargaining agreement between the league and the union, the burden is on the player to prove that owners actively conspired against him.
“That is often difficult to do because parties typically don’t leave a written record of their illegal maneuvering,” said William Gould, who was chairman of the National Labor Relations Board at the time of the Major League Baseball strike in 1994.