The office of the Washington, D.C., attorney general announced Thursday it is suing the NFL’s Washington Commanders, team owner Daniel Snyder, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, and the league. The consumer protection lawsuit accuses the defendants of “colluding to deceive” customers “about an investigation into toxic workplace culture.”
Attorney General Karl Racine said the organization and the league misled district residents about the probe in order to protect and increase revenue.
The suit, filed in the civil division of the D.C. Superior Court, claims the Washington Commanders and the NFL violated the district’s consumer protections with “public misrepresentations, omissions, and ambiguities of material fact.”
“Faced with public outrage over detailed and widespread allegations of sexual misconduct and a persistently hostile work environment at the Team, Defendants made a series of public statements to convince District consumers that this dysfunctional and misogynistic conduct was limited and that they were fully cooperating with an independent investigation,” the suit alleges. “These statements were false and calculated to mislead consumers so they would continue to support the Team financially without thinking that they were supporting such misconduct.”
“After public reporting revealed that sexual misconduct, harassment, and misogyny ran rampant for decades at the team, the defendants promised DC residents that the league was going to fix this toxic culture, including by fully cooperating with an independent investigation,” Racine said on Twitter.
“That was all a lie.”
He accused the league of turning a “blind eye to Snyder’s extensive efforts to silence or intimidate witnesses, and the NFL and Commanders entered into a secret agreement that gave Snyder power to veto the release of any results” of the investigation.
In a statement Wednesday indicating action from Racine’s office was in the works, the team accused the attorney general of being “more interested in making splashy headlines, based on offbeat legal theories, rather than doing the hard work of making the streets safe.”
The NFL has not yet responded to requests for comment from the Washington Post or other outlets.
