(The Lion) — Major League Baseball should no longer benefit from an exclusion of antitrust laws, especially after the league’s recent religious discrimination against numerous Christian players this week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, told The Lion in an interview.
“Major League Baseball gets a special sweetheart deal that no other sport gets, and no other business gets. They are exempt from the antitrust laws. That is worth billions of dollars to Major League Baseball every year. It was created by the Supreme Court years and years ago. Frankly, I think it’s wrong,” Hawley said.
Federal antitrust laws are intended to prevent monopolies in various businesses, industries and sports throughout the country. MLB is the only sport association exempt from these laws, and Hawley says they are abusing their privilege.
“I think we ought to reverse it,” he said. “Given the way they’re choosing to use this enormous power to punish people of faith while they force them to wear political messages and endorse political messages that are truly controversial, they don’t agree with. I just think it’s outrageous.”
MLB Religious discrimination following Pride Night
This week, the MLB issued a warning to San Francisco Giants pitchers for writing Bible verses on their LGBT-themed hats, which included a rainbow symbol, for the team’s “Pride Night” June 12. Pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker wrote Genesis 9:12-16 on their caps, a biblical citation about the rainbow as a sign of God’s covenant to never again flood the earth.
“That’s just something I believe in, and I stand firm in that, and I’m thankful we live in a country where, you know, we have the freedom to believe what we want … and express what we want,” Roupp told the media. “There’s no hate at all. It’s just what I stand for, and what I stand in. I believe in God.”
Some of Roupp’s teammates and other MLB players defended him publicly.
“Landen Roupp wrote a verse on his hat – that means that he’s anti something? That doesn’t mean that. It means that he’s pro something,” Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Ryan Thompson said in a recent interview. “So, the rainbow means something to him. It means that he believes in the Noah covenant being something that’s special to us as Christians. That means that no matter how bad we possibly could be, no matter how much we reject God, that He will never again flood the earth.”
The league claimed it opposed the writing on the caps, not the message itself, but many conservative leaders argue the MLB is being inconsistent in forcing the expression of LGBT ideology.
Hawley sent a letter Tuesday to the league, rebuking the hypocrisy.
“MLB has said this is a content-neutral policy and that MLB ‘respect[s] players’ right to free expression,’” Hawley wrote. “But this is dubious, given that MLB is openly promoting a political viewpoint and possibly compelling adherence to that viewpoint.”
Hawley asked MLB to respond by Friday with a copy of the league’s uniform policy, a report of previous incidents within the past five years involving uniform regulation, a record of other messages such as “Black Lives Matter,” displayed during games and the league’s policy regarding the expression of religious beliefs and requirements for Pride Night attire.
Hawley compared the league’s actions to an employer forbidding an employee from wearing a cross necklace.
“The religious discrimination needs to end. It is real, and it is outrageous,” Hawley said.
“What they’re doing here is a violation of the Constitution, the First Amendment. It’s probably a violation of their labor contracts, and they need to knock it off,” he added.
