A federal appeals court has ruled that Bonneville International Corp. was within its rights to fire longtime Sacramento sports broadcaster Grant Napear over a 2020 tweet reading “All Lives Matter.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued the decision Wednesday, upholding a lower court’s dismissal of Napear’s wrongful-termination lawsuit.
Napear, who had served as the Sacramento Kings’ play-by-play announcer and a host on KHTK radio, lost both jobs within 48 hours during the protests that followed George Floyd’s death in May 2020. The controversy began when former Kings star DeMarcus Cousins asked Napear on Twitter, now X, “What’s your take on BLM?” Napear responded that he was glad to hear from Cousins, then added, “ALL LIVES MATTER … EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!”
Bonneville, which employed Napear at KHTK and as the Kings’ announcer, suspended him the following day and fired him the day after that.
The appeals panel found that Napear’s contract required him to maintain “a high standard of care and level of responsibility” on social media because his conduct could affect the company’s “public image and reputation.” The judges wrote that his tweet “involved his celebrity persona such that his statement fell within the scope of his professional capacity.”
Napear’s attorney, Matthew Ruggles, rejected that reasoning.
“Grant Napear actually owned that Twitter account, had published approximately 38,500 tweets before he tweeted ‘All Lives Matter…Every Single One,’ and that tweet was not made on-air, during work, or as part of any radio show,” Ruggles said. “It was Grant’s personal expression, and that issue should be decided by a jury, not the court.”
Ruggles said he intends to request a rehearing before the full appeals court, and, if that fails, to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case.
Napear lost at every stage of the litigation so far. U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd, an Obama appointee, dismissed the lawsuit before trial. On appeal, Judges Bridget Bade, Danielle Forrest and Lawrence VanDyke, all Trump appointees, left that ruling in place.
After losing his broadcasting jobs, Napear spent five years hosting a podcast. He returned to radio last August as a daily host on Fox Sports Radio in Sacramento, competing directly against his former station, KHTK.
Napear is not the first sports broadcaster to lose a job over a social media post. A Dallas radio station fired former major league pitcher Mike Bacsik in 2010 after he posted a disparaging comment about “Mexicans in San Antonio.”
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