Can MLB Prevent Baseball Players from Writing Bible Verses on Their Caps?

​Like baseball great Yogi Berra, who once said he’d give his right arm to be ambidextrous, we’d like to accommodate all sides in a debate over speech, religious belief, and one’s obligations to an employer.

But it ain’t that simple.

When the San Francisco Giants required players to promote LGBT+ inclusivity during Pride Month with rainbow caps, most members of the team wore the cap. But several members added Bible verses to their caps, while one or two opted not to wear the caps at all.

Major League Baseball had warned the players that writing on the caps violates league policy. The league’s crackdown inspired Vice President J.D. Vance and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to rush to defend the speech rights of the dissenters on the diamond.

Where does the First Amendment actually come into play here?

On one hand, many players – like starter Landen Roupp and relievers JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker – had objections to the cap on the basis of traditional religious beliefs. Roupp had used a marker to ink in “Gen. 9:12-16” on his cap to shift the Pride narrative to the Biblical passage in which the Lord set rainbows in the clouds as a sign of His covenant.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the religious rights of the players must be respected by their employers. Surely, one’s religious beliefs can’t be trumped by marketing, right?

But there are other dimensions to this story that reveal the complexities and tradeoffs in First Amendment law that often come into play in the real world. It is, in fact, league policy to forbid any writing on a team baseball cap, as one player found out earlier when he received a warning for writing “I Love Mom” on his cap. So it is no surprise that players were reprimanded for writing Bible verses on their caps.

Then there is the issue of the players’ contractual obligations to the team. While we don’t have access to their contracts, we are confident that players cannot show up to play wearing top hats, berets, or caps that advertise their favorite beer. Part of being a Giant means showing up in a Giants uniform. And being part of a team means supporting the team’s messaging.

So how might a solution balance the First Amendment and the free exercise of religion with the dissenters’ contractual obligations to their team?

When there is such a collision of rights and obligations, the law usually seeks a reasonable accommodation – a compromise that respects an employee’s beliefs without impeding the needs of the employer.

Protect The 1st believes that a reasonable accommodation of the First Amendment rights of the players would be to allow those with sincere religious objections to the rainbow cap to instead wear the Giants’ customary black cap with “SF” emblazoned in orange. This accommodation would not, however, allow players to appropriate the team’s logo for their own messages – whether Bible verses, kisses to Mom, or anything else. To allow that would be to allow players to commandeer the image of the whole team.
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Such a compromise is not satisfying and is likely to upset some people on both sides of the Pride versus Bible divide. But sometimes, to paraphrase Yogi, when you come to a fork in the road, you gotta take it.

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