By using the word "mistreat" I did not mean in the legal sense of the word. You can split hairs all you want but I'm sure you get the gist of what I'm saying. Sterling hasn't broken any laws that I am aware of but he is suffering the consequence of his careless expression of his right to free speech. You have every right to tell your boss to go fuck himself but he has every right to fire you if you do
Actually here are the things with Sterling. He has a history of racial incidents. These are not heresay or anything, they are proven facts. The NBA has bylaws that they all agree to abide by, and one of them is that if 75% of the owners vote it, you are forced to sell your entity. They GRANTED you the right to own a NBA franchise. There is no right to join an organization, it was granted by the NBA. Thus the NBA is able to take it away by the same document you agreed to whenever you joined. So yes this is very legal. Now you are correct about California law. If he wants to he can very much sue his mistress. He can sue for the damage it will cause him (2.5 million in the least, and then he can make an argument that selling the Clippers is going to cost him money also). Will he ever see it? Not likely. Will it make him look even worse? Most likely. Does he care? not likely.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban comments: https://screen.yahoo.com/cuban-comments-sterling-remarks-163800673.html
So instead of celebrating the life of the man that represented everything right about the NBA (Dr. Jack Ramsey), we're having to clog the airwaves talking about this fucking loser. Double whammy.
Not trying to split hairs or put you on the spot or anything. Just hashing out a ridiculous conundrum.
@VampMuse Thanks for the explanation about where NBA rules will come down about this. But the thing about any rules that aren't made by a legal body is, they are all legal until they aren't. Or more succintly, we really don't know if its "legal" if it hasn't been challenged in court. No judge is going to waste his time reading the NBA by-laws, and arbitrarily saying, "hey you can't do x-y-z." The courts don't even think about things like this until someone has a grievance. And you can bet your bottom dollar Stirling is going to have a grievance. Not saying he'll win, just saying he's going to fight it. And to go back to the beginning....the courts saying its perfectly OK for a man to have his business taken away from him for saying something unpopular in private? I feel pretty good about saying that's not a good precedent.
