The NFL Is A Speech Referee (And Not A Good One)
The NFL can't claim "neutrality" when it endorses certain political messages over others.
Last week, the National Football League fined Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair nearly $12,000 for wearing eye black that read “Stop Genocide” during a playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The league said the message violated its uniform policy, which bars “personal messages” on game-day equipment.
But just months earlier, in the same season, the NFL permitted tributes to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder, across the league after his assassination. The league chose to hold a moment of “silent reflection” during Thursday Night Football and authorized the teams to hold their own tributes if they chose to.
These recent events illustrate how the NFL has never been fully comfortable with players and teams sharing opinions, while at the same time adopting policies that seem to take overt political stances. And it has nothing to do with whether one agrees with Al-Shaair’s characterization of the events in Gaza or supports Kirk’s views. Instead, it’s about a league with immense cultural power and influence, normalizing that selective censorship can be a virtue rather than a problem.
The NFL insists that it is neutral; its actions suggest otherwise.
Neutrality has become a talking point and a corporate marketing tool that creates a perverse incentive structure. Players learn quickly that some viewpoints carry little risk while others may cost them money, opportunities, or career longevity. This inconsistency in the implementation and enforcement of the league’s policies is especially glaring given the NFL’s global nature.
Defenders of the NFL may argue that “Stop Genocide” is inherently more controversial than honoring a political commentator. But that argument only exposes the core problem. Who decides what counts as inflammatory? Which figures are mainstream enough to merit public tribute? These judgments inevitably reflect the values and biases of those in power. When they are applied unevenly, they stop looking like rules and start looking like preferences.
Ten years ago, Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers who took the team to the Super Bowl, knelt during the National Anthem to raise awareness of racial inequality and to protest police brutality. This sent shockwaves through the NFL and shaped conversations on free speech that year. After becoming a free agent, Kaepernick wasn’t able to sign with another team and sued the NFL, alleging that the league had blacklisted him. They later reached a settlement, and the NFL adopted a new national anthem policy requiring players to stand during the anthem or remain in the locker room.
It becomes even more difficult to square the NFL’s inconsistent approach to political “neutrality,” given its relationship with the U.S. government. In 2015, a year before the Kaepernick controversy, a PBS investigation revealed that the Department of Defense paid the league more than $5 million in taxpayer money between 2011 and 2014 to stage “patriotic” displays at games, including on-field ceremonies and in-stadium tributes to soldiers.
The NFL was comfortable accepting taxpayer funding to present a specific vision of patriotism and national identity. But when players engage in unscripted, bottom-up political expression, the league suddenly rediscovers an aversion to political messages.
To be clear, the NFL is a private employer. It has the legal right to regulate on-the-job expression and promote whatever ideas it wants. But with that great power comes great responsibility, especially for an institution that occupies a significant cultural space in American life.
The league could establish clear, consistently enforced rules — either prohibit all political expression during games or create genuine space for players to express their convictions. Instead, it has chosen a third path, selective enforcement, that protects certain speech while punishing others, all while claiming to stand for nothing.
The National Football League, which markets itself as a reflection of America and its values, has chosen a path that mirrors viewpoint discrimination, the form of censorship the First Amendment prohibits in government, precisely because it corrupts the marketplace of ideas. An inconsistent posture on free speech doesn’t reflect those values.
Free speech is a legal guarantee in the United States, but it’s also a social and cultural value. We must look to our institutions, like the National Football League, to uphold and reinforce it.
Ashkhen Kazaryan is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Future of Free Speech, where she leads initiatives to protect free expression and shape policies that uphold the First Amendment in the digital age.