Josh Goodbaum: Hi, Amanda.
Amanda DeMatteis: Hi, Josh. We’re talking about one of my favorite topics today. What is it?
Goodbaum: We’re talking about basketball, and it’s basketball and employment law. As we sit here today recording, we’re in the middle of the NBA playoffs. It’s very exciting for basketball fans like you. I gotta admit: I’m not a follower of professional basketball, but go UConn Huskies!
There’s something going on with the NBA and employment law and Tyrese Haliburton, a person you just told me about. So, tell us what’s going on and what our viewers can learn about the employment law implications of this situation.
DeMatteis: I love when my worlds connect, so this is fun for me. Big basketball fans in our house. Honestly, we watch just about every NBA game that is on, and, of course, that includes the playoffs.
So, in the first round of the 2025 NBA playoffs, the Indiana Pacers defeated the Milwaukee Bucks, 4-1. At the end of game 5, Tyrese Haliburton, who is a guard for the Pacers – he was on Team USA and won the gold medal in last year’s Olympics in Paris – his dad, who was a fan and a spectator, rushes the court and he gets into the face of Bucks’ star Giannis Antetokounmpo. And he’s really celebrating, he’s projecting this win, and he’s very excited. But these two guys end up going forehead to forehead in what became a very, very, very tense exchange. You didn’t know if punches were going to be thrown.
Well, why does this matter for employment law?
After this altercation, the NBA decided that they were going to ban Tyrese Haliburton’s dad from going to Indiana Pacers games. And there was some outrage. We heard Charles Barkley saying to Tyrese Haliburton after a win, “Free Pops, free Pops, let’s get your dad back to games!” Effective just this weekend, while we’re in the midst of the conference finals, the Indiana Pacers have said Tyrese Haliburton’s dad can come back. So the question is, why did they do this?
Josh, talk to us a little bit about why an employer of someone like Giannis Antetokounmpo would take this type of action to protect him while he’s at his job as a player for the NBA and the Milwaukee Bucks.
Goodbaum: Well, employers are often on the hook, Amanda, if their employees are in dangerous situations, and they know about it. If they can prevent a danger to their employee and fail to do so, the employer might be legally liable.
In this context, let’s imagine that Tyrese Haliburton’s dad had come back to a game, he hadn’t been banned from games, and then he got violent with another fan, right? If that fan had been hurt, he might they have sued the NBA and said, “NBA, you did not take appropriate actions to make me safe here. You were negligent.”
This comes up in the employment context a lot in the case of sexual harassment. So, an employer is not liable for sexual harassment, generally, if the harassment is committed by a coworker or a third party – that is, someone who doesn’t work for the company – and the employer has no notice of the harassment and took appropriate actions in advance to prevent the harassment. But once the employer knows that a coworker or a third party is a threat for sexual harassment or has demonstrated themselves to engage in sexual harassment, the employer has an obligation to do something to prevent that sexual harassment.
We see this a lot, Amanda, in the context of restaurants, of retail establishments, where there might be a customer or a patron who really does not treat the employees well or respectfully. They might touch the employees inappropriately. And once the employee goes to management and says, “Hey, Joe Customer is sexually harassing me. Do something about it,” the employer needs to do something about it. And if the employer does not take affirmative steps to prevent that sexual harassment and Joe Customer comes back and commits sexual harassment again, now the employer is arguably liable for that sexual harassment under our anti-discrimination laws, both state and federal.
So, this idea of notice to an employer and an employer’s obligation to prevent unlawful and dangerous conduct, including sexual harassment, is something that comes up in the NBA, but it also comes up in our everyday employment law practices here in Connecticut.
DeMatteis: This is the first thing we need to prove in coworker or third-party harassment cases: notice. And once we can, then liability can attach.
So, really what the Indiana Pacers organization was doing, what the NBA was doing, is they were protecting themselves legally so that, if this happened again, they could say, “Hey, we were on notice of it, but we did something to prevent it from happening to someone else,” so liability shouldn’t attach.
Interesting intersection of NBA basketball and employment law. Thanks for watching. Take care.