Football

The N.F.L. has taken over an investigation into claims of sexual harassment made by more than a dozen women who worked for the Washington Football Team during the past two decades.The move comes after lawyers representing some of the women last week criticized the investigation and the N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell for allowing the team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, to hire the law firm that is investigating the matter and to control the response to its findings.In July, Snyder hired Beth Wilkinson, a founding partner of Wilkinson Walsh, to conduct “an independent review of the team’s culture, policies and allegations of workplace misconduct” that were raised in reporting by The Washington Post. The newspaper published another story last month that included claims from another two dozen women about pervasive harassment while employed by the team, including allegations that implicated Snyder. A former cheerleader accused the team owner of propositioning her and a former staffer said that a lewd video recording of the outtakes of a cheerleader photo shoot was made at Snyder’s behest.Snyder denied many elements of The Post’s reporting, including the proposition allegation and any involvement in the recording.On Monday, Snyder said in a statement that he suggested to Goodell that the league take over the investigation “so that the results are thorough, complete and trusted by the fans, the players, our employees and the public.”Wilkinson will now report directly to the league, not to Snyder.Lisa Friel, a special counsel for investigations at the N.F.L., met yesterday with lawyers representing some of the women who spoke to the Washington Post. After their meeting, Lisa Banks and Debra Katz, lawyers who represent more than 15 former team employees, said that the N.F.L. “assured us that any repercussions for the team or its owner will be commensurate” with the findings of the investigation.Some of those employees said they would not cooperate if Snyder had ultimate say over the investigation.“Our clients would gladly participate in such an N.F.L. investigation, but do not feel safe speaking to investigators hired by Mr. Snyder and do not trust the investigation that is currently underway,” the lawyers said in a letter to Goodell last week.The N.F.L. also said the Washington team would release employees or former employees from nondisclosure agreements to allow them to speak with investigators. Lawyers for the accusers want the team to go a step further and release them from all elements of their nondisclosure agreements, freeing them to speak with each other and to family, friends, and the media.“We communicated our strong belief that without this type of transparency, there can be no real accountability, and moreover, that victims of this type of abuse should be able to tell their stories when and how they wish to do so, without threat of legal action,” Banks and Katz, the lawyers for the women, said.Last week, Banks and Katz also called on the N.F.L. to “publicly commit to taking action to remove Snyder as the majority owner” of the team if the investigation substantiates the accounts reported by The Washington Post. The lawyers also asked the league to advise Snyder to not take legal action against women who spoke out about their experiences at the team.Last month, Snyder accused Mary Ellen Blair, a former executive assistant who left the team in 2017, of taking money and assisting in a campaign to spread damaging information against him. In a filing in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., Snyder said that starting in late May or early June, Blair began reaching out to current and former team employees seeking information that would discredit the team owner. More

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Two dozen women described experiencing bullying, harassment and fear during their time working for the Washington N.F.L. team, according to a report published Wednesday by The Washington Post. The women described an office culture where managers were unwilling or unable to hold front office executives accountable for abusive behavior.Tiffany Bacon Scourby, a former cheerleader, accused the team owner Daniel Snyder of propositioning her to join his close friend in a hotel room. Brad Baker, a former staff member who worked for the team’s former play-by-play announcer and senior vice president, Larry Michael, said that at Snyder’s behest Michael made a lewd video recording of the outtakes of a cheerleader photo shoot.The report came on the heels of an article published by the newspaper last month in which 15 women said they faced pervasive sexual harassment while employed by the team. A number of front office executives, including Michael, resigned or were fired in the days surrounding the report’s release.Snyder has not spoken publicly about the issues raised in the articles, relying instead on formal statements, including one released on Wednesday in which he denied many elements of The Post’s reporting, including the proposition allegation. “I want to unequivocally state that this never happened,” Snyder said. He also denied knowing about any video recordings, saying, “I did not request their creation and I never saw them.” He said he believed them to be either “unauthorized or fraudulent.”Snyder said that the new article was his first time hearing of these women’s accusations.The statement on Wednesday went further than Snyder’s previous comments after the July article. In the wake of the first report, Snyder hired the law firm Wilkinson Walsh to investigate the claims raised by the women and disavowed the behavior they described as having “no place in our franchise or society.”This time, Snyder reiterated that stance but added, “I take full responsibility for the culture of our organization.” He went on to say that he had been operating the team at a remove and vowed to be more involved in its running, noting that he had hired several new executives to change the team’s culture on and off the field.Still, Snyder pushed back at The Post, claiming that the article was “riddled with questionable and unnamed sources” and describing it as a “hit job.” He claimed that there were former team employees willing to speak on the record to dispute some of the women’s claims, but that they were not included in the story.Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, also released a statement in response to the new accusations. “We strongly condemn the unprofessional, disturbing and abhorrent behavior and workplace environment alleged in the report which is entirely inconsistent with our standards and has no place in the N.F.L.,” he said.The allegations raised in both investigations are some of several crises confronting Snyder and the team. In just the past few months, he ditched the team’s 87-year-old name and logo after a revolt by sponsors, began a legal battle that has implicated a co-owner of the team who wants to sell his part of the franchise and, last week, learned that the head coach he hired to revive the team, Ron Rivera, would have treatment for cancer. More

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The Kansas City Chiefs said on Thursday that the team was prohibiting fans from wearing ceremonial headdresses and Native American-style face paint at Arrowhead Stadium, becoming the latest organization to confront offensive symbols amid a nationwide discussion of racist imagery and iconography.The announcement came just over a month after Washington’s football team declared, under pressure from corporate sponsors, that it would drop its logo and the Redskins name.The Chiefs said that although the team had discouraged fans from wearing headdresses for several years, the organization had decided, after discussions with Native American leaders, to ban the headdresses, effective immediately, at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo.Fans will still be allowed to wear face paint, but any face paint “styled in a way that references or appropriates American Indian cultures and traditions will be prohibited,” the team said. Fans will be asked to remove any such face paint before passing through security checks outside the stadium, the team said.The team also said it was reviewing the “Arrowhead Chop,” a tomahawk-like arm motion usually accompanied by a made-up war cry that fans perform at games. The team said it was also exploring changes to the “Drum Deck,” an area in Arrowhead Stadium where Chiefs players and others bang a large drum to kick off games.The organization said it hoped to find another way to unify players and fans while better representing the spiritual significance of the drum in American Indian cultures. One possibility under discussion, the team said, would involve shifting the focus of the drum “to something that symbolizes the heartbeat of the stadium.”The Chiefs did not announce any changes to the team name or the name of its stadium.The Chiefs’ announcement after the decision by Washington’s football team to change its name increased pressure on the remaining professional teams with Native American mascots and logos to re-evaluate their names and monikers.In addition to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Chicago Blackhawks of the N.H.L. and the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians of Major League Baseball have long resisted changing their names and logos, though the Indians dropped the mascot Chief Wahoo last year and recently said they would review the team name.The Chiefs said the changes announced on Thursday had come after discussions that began in 2014 with a group of local leaders from diverse American Indian backgrounds as well as with a national organization that works on issues affecting American Indian people and tribes. The team did not name the organization.The Chiefs said they planned to continue several traditions intended to honor Native Americans, including a Blessing of the Four Directions, a Blessing of the Drum and an invitation that the team has extended to tribe members to attend its American Indian Heritage Month Game.“As an organization, our goal was to gain a better understanding of the issues facing American Indian communities in our region and explore opportunities to both raise awareness of American Indian cultures and celebrate the rich traditions of tribes with a historic connection to the Kansas City area,” the team said in a statement. More

Robert K. Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, won another decisive victory in his attempt to fight two misdemeanor charges of solicitation of prostitution, after judges issued a strong rebuke of police tactics used in the case against him.In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel in the Florida Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach affirmed a lower court decision that the police improperly gathered video evidence central to the case made against Kraft and two dozen other men who were recorded visiting and receiving treatment at several South Florida day spas.“We find the trial courts properly concluded that the criminal defendants had standing to challenge the video surveillance and that total suppression of the video recordings was constitutionally warranted,” the judges wrote in their decision on Wednesday.Unless state prosecutors ask the state Supreme Court to hear their appeal, the decision effectively ends the case against Kraft, who was originally charged in February 2019 with two counts of soliciting sex in Jupiter, Fla., after the police investigated the spas and massage parlors on suspicion of prostitution and human trafficking.“We are pleased that the Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled in our favor by affirming suppression of recordings that should never have been taken,” a spokesman for Kraft said in a statement. “This ruling protects the constitutional rights and civil liberties of all the men and women who were illegally spied on in this case. More broadly, this ruling will further protect the civil liberties of all Americans, by helping prevent future Fourth Amendment violations like those that occurred in this case.”The decision is likely to reduce the chance that the N.F.L. will penalize Kraft, 79, for conduct deemed detrimental to the league. Roger Goodell, the league’s commissioner, has broad authority to hold players, league executives and owners accountable for their actions, and penalties can include fines of up to $500,000 and suspensions, based not just on the outcome of the legal case, but also on the damage to the league’s reputation.When law enforcement officials first brought the case, they claimed they had unearthed a human trafficking ring at day spas in South Florida. But over time, the case focused more narrowly on the misdemeanor charges against Kraft and the other men.While some of the two dozen other men who were also charged in the case have paid fines and performed community service to resolve their cases, Kraft declined to take a plea deal, which would have expunged any record of the case.Instead, Kraft’s lawyers argued that video showing him and other patrons at the day spa, Orchids of Asia, was improperly obtained by undercover cameras and that the police did not sufficiently minimize the scope of their surveillance when applying for a warrant to film there. The video, they said, violated the constitutional rights of Kraft and the other customers recorded.In May 2019, a Palm Beach County court judge agreed with Kraft’s lawyers and threw out the video evidence in the case. The ruling echoed decisions made by judges in nearby counties where defendants were charged with similar misdemeanors after having been identified in surveillance investigations.The Florida attorney general, Ashley Moody, taking up the case for the state attorney in Palm Beach County who charged Kraft and the others, argued that the police in the case followed established procedures for obtaining permission to install the cameras.Lauren Cassedy, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general, said her “office is reviewing the ruling.”The three judges on the appeals panel, however, said that “while there will be situations which may warrant the use of the techniques at issue, the strict Fourth Amendment safeguards developed over the past few decades must be observed.” The judges added: “To permit otherwise would yield unbridled discretion to agents of law enforcement and the government, the antithesis of the constitutional liberty of people to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures.” More