Free speech and sports press

[bunkmoreland]

Interesting.
I agree that there is no First Amendment issue. Nothing in the Constitution would prohibit a private corporation from suspending an employee for something he has said. But with that out of the way, I don't think suspending Simmons was necessarily a wise move on ESPN's part. I think a lot of people right now feel the same frustration with Goodell that Simmons was expressing. ESPN might be smarter to distance themself from Goodell than to be seen jumping to his defense.
In terms of whether corporations have too much power to restrict employees' speech/actions, sure I think they have too much power that way. I just don't see a quick way of using the Constitution or the courts to fix that problem, in a country whose courts have declared that corporations are people and have free speech rights and all other constitutional protections. If an attempt were made to try to block companies from censoring their employees, that attempt is going to be judged a violation of the corporation's First Amendment right to free speech.