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Originally Posted by roscoe36  Perhaps David Stern fashions himself as the Supreme Court of NBA players, but what goes on personally, off the court should not be punished in the workplace. It gives him way too much leniency and power to mete out fines, suspensions etc on what are criminal or civil matters, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't have that power under the constitution or any state laws. |
The law that matters is the contract between the employer and the employee, and in this case, the one governing the rules of what the commissioner can or can't do vis-a-vis the players is the collective bargaining agreement. I don't know the exact wording of the agreement on this issue, but all the major sports grant some sort of off-field disciplinary powers to the commissioner in one way or another. The controversial one in baseball is the "best interests of baseball" clause, which arguably grants the commish the power to do anything he wants to any player, as long as he can argue that his actions are in the "best interests" of the game.
But with the NFL now, the players' union has consented to the commish cracking down on off-field troublemakers, to a much greater degree than anything that's happened in the NBA. So I can't imagine any lawsuit where the players successfully reduce (or strip) the NBA commish of his power to suspend them for off-court stuff.