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The Justice Department announced on Thursday that it is opening an investigation into whether Major League Baseball (MLB) engaged in religious discrimination when it issued warnings to three players for wearing caps with Bible verses on them during a Pride Night game.
“Swing and a miss! Major League Baseball encouraged players to wear “Black Lives Matter” on their uniforms but reportedly threatened Christians who write Bible verses on their hats,” Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in a post on the social platform X.
The controversy centers around three San Francisco Giants players — pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker — who wore rainbow-logo hats with various Bible verses inscribed on them during a game against the Chicago Cubs last week at Oracle Park.
League rules prohibit players from attaching or displaying personal messages on their playing gear unless pre-approved by the commissioner’s office. The Giants players were not disciplined but received verbal warnings.
A fourth Giants pitcher, Sam Hentges, opted to wear the team’s regular hat instead of the rainbow-logo hat because of his Christian beliefs and did not face a warning.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” MLB said in a statement to multiple outlets on Monday.
The league clarified that those warnings were not about the messages themselves but rather about modifying the uniform, noting that players had received similar warnings in the past for messages like “Happy Mother’s Day” and other family tributes.
But Dhillon argued in a letter to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred Jr. on Thursday that it was promoting a “double standard” by enforcing the policy against the Giants players but not against those who previously opted to wear “Black Lives Matter” patches.
She also noted that the matter had been referred to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) for potential violations of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin.
“The Civil Rights Act prohibits MLB and its franchise from unreasonably burdening the rights of players with religious objections to serving as the Leagues’ vehicle for pro-Pride messages,” Dhillon wrote. “Federal law is clear: employers must modify their uniform requirements to reasonably accommodate their employees’ exercise of religion.”
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) made similar allegations on Friday when announcing a state-level probe on Friday into what he described as a “pattern or practice” of selective enforcement and possible religious discrimination.
“MLB therefore appears to applaud—even change its rules for—the ideological beliefs it prefers, but targets players who express religious views the League doesn’t like,” he wrote in a separate letter to Manfred. “The MLB’s apparent history of selective nonenforcement suggests that it applied its uniform rule uniquely against Roupp and the other pitchers simply because they expressed a religious belief.”
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