Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has launched an investigation into Major League Baseball (MLB), following a similar effort launched by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway.
In a letter sent to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred, Uthmeier wrote that “a pattern or practice of selectively enforcing its rules to benefit favored secular beliefs over disfavored religious beliefs would not only potentially violate Florida civil rights law, but it would also violate the League’s own policies.”
“And a practice of claiming not to discriminate based on religion while discriminating based on religion could further amount to an unfair or deceptive trade practice in violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act,” the letter, reported by Fox News, reads.
According to the subpoena, the MLB is to produce all uniform and equipment rules, enforcement history since 2020, documents surrounding “Permitted Expression” policies, and other materials, including policies on “Pride Night.”
“Major League Baseball claims it does not tolerate discrimination based on religion, yet its actions tell a different story,” Uthmeier said in a statement. “If MLB applauds ideological messages it prefers while reprimanding expressions of Christian faith, that is not neutral rule enforcement—it is religious discrimination that cannot stand in Florida.”
This week, Missouri AG Catherine Hanaway asked MLB not to punish San Francisco Giants players after they wrote Bible verses on their Pride Night hats.
Hanaway shared the letter on X, writing that Missouri will “not tolerate any threat to punish a player for exercising his sincerely held religious or moral beliefs.” Doing so, she wrote, is “both illegal and un-American.”
“Forcing employees to espouse viewpoints that conflict with deeply held religious beliefs violates both federal and state law,” the letter added, and went on to call MLB’s actions “just plain wrong.”
