6 state attorneys general threaten NFL with probe over treatment of female employees

6 state attorneys basic issued a threat to the National Soccer League on Wednesday: defend woman workforce or encounter a prospective investigation.

“Our workplaces will use the full pounds of our authority to investigate and prosecute allegations of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation by employers all through our states, which include at the National Soccer League,” the lawyers typical from New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington wrote in a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “All of this is solely unacceptable and probably illegal.”

The letter was obtained by ABC Information.

The letter facilities on a tale published by the New York Times that it explained “explained a office tradition that is overtly hostile to ladies.”

All but one particular of the states have an NFL franchise and the condition of New York is dwelling to NFL headquarters.

“In New York, in which the NFL is headquartered, the Business office of the Lawyer Common has never ever hesitated to acquire action to defend workforce from sexual harassment and abuse, no matter if they are entry-stage workforce of the Weinstein Corporation or servers and bartenders at Batali-owned places to eat,” the letter states.

In February, a congressional committee heard from former Washington Commanders workers about potential sexual harassments allegations. Tiffani Johnston, a former advertising and marketing and situations coordinator for the then-Washington Redskins, was allegedly put up coming to operator Dan Synder at a meal “not to talk about business enterprise, but to make it possible for him, Dan Snyder, to location his hand on my thigh less than the desk.”

Snyder, in a statement reported by ESPN, apologized for earlier misconduct by the corporation, but denied the new allegations involving himself.

The letter to Goodell says in the aftermath of the Ray Rice scandal in 2014, the NFL promised to improve the tradition for girls at the NFL, but it claimed the allegations talked about in the New York Situations account “recommend that you have not.”

Feminine employees informed the New York Periods they were “that they had been held again and criticized for having an “‘aggressive tone’ — an often unfair stereotype of women, specially women of all ages of shade, who test to advance in a male dominated workplace.”

“Other gals claimed that, in a schooling meant to increase sensitivity on the problem, they were requested to elevate their hand to self-discover if they had been victims of domestic violence or knew another person who had,” the letter claims. “This is NOT executing far better. Anti-discrimination regulations in numerous states, including New York, prohibit employers from subjecting domestic violence victims, as properly as females and persons of shade, to a hostile do the job setting.”

In a assertion, NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told ABC Information the NFL shares the “motivation of the lawyers normal to making certain that all of our workplaces — which include the league workplace and 32 golf equipment — are varied, inclusive and free from discrimination and harassment.”

“We have produced wonderful strides about the a long time in guidance of that determination, but accept that we, like several companies, have a lot more get the job done to do,” McCarthy claimed in an electronic mail. “We appear forward to sharing with the attorneys basic the procedures, tactics, protocols, education plans and partnerships we have executed to act on this motivation and affirm that the league business office and our golf equipment maintain a respectful workplace where by all our employees, such as females, have an possibility to prosper.”

He pointed to employee schooling applications with Increase, GLAAD, Paradigm, The Winters Group and inside affinity teams exactly where personnel can interact, learn and assist each individual other within scaled-down communities like BEN (Black Engagement Community), PIN (Moms and dads Initiative Network) and Earn (Women’s Interactive Community), as examples.