Beyond CERD: Private Entities’ Obligations to Address Gender Violence

The recent CERD observations addressed violence against women and the state’s need to address ongoing violence, particularly against minority women.  Leigh Goodmark reminds us that private entities also play a significant role in perpetuating violence against women when they fail to impose significant sanctions against employees who batter.  She writes:

The National Football League’s season started Thursday night, but the NFL has consistently been in the news since February, when Baltimore Raven Ray Rice knocked his then-fiancé unconscious in an Atlantic City casino elevator in February 2014.  Following the furor over the NFL’s decision to suspend Rice for only two games, the NFL last week announced a new policy on player-involved domestic violence—a 6 week suspension for the first offense, and at least a year suspension for a second offense.  Some have questioned whether the NFL’s stance is unreasonable in cases where criminal liability is not established.  The NFL’s answer has been that the personal conduct policy does not require a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt because players in the NFL are held to a “higher standard” of conduct.  As well they should be.  What is most troubling about the NFL’s historical lack of response is the failure to acknowledge that pro football bears some responsibility for the damage that its players are able to do to their partners.  Professional football players are trained to be bigger, stronger, faster, and more aggressive than most elite athletes, let alone their partners.  The league encourages men to be violent, pays men huge salaries to be violent, then fails to sanction them for using that violence off the field.  The league allows quarterbacks to wear red jerseys during practice; those jerseys tell their teammates not to hit the quarterback too hard.  Perhaps the partners of NFL players should be issued those jerseys as well (an idea that came from a long-time Jets fan).

The NFL already has an opportunity to show that it plans to take domestic violence seriously.  Since the announcement of the new policy last week, two players, Ray McDonald of the 49ers, and Quincy Enunwa of the Jets, have been arrested for assaulting their partners.  Clearly the new policy hasn’t yet served as a deterrent; time will tell whether the NFL’s strong, consistent application of the policy will.

Editor’s Post Script:  Following McDonald’s arrest the 49’s coach announced his intention to play McDonald at yesterday’s game.  He said that McDonald’s due process rights were at play.  Despite Goodall’s earlier announcement that the resonable doubt standard is not applicable to the suspension of players, he did not override the coach’s decision saying that he was not going “rush to judgment“.