ESPN and its host Sage Steele have come to an agreement to end a lawsuit she filed. This happened after she got in trouble for talking about ESPN’s rule that says all employees must get a COVID-19 vaccine.
Sage Steele Decides to Leave ESPN
Sage Steele said on Tuesday that she’s leaving the company based in Bristol, Connecticut. She had been working there since 2007.
Sage Steele Tweet: Life update: Having successfully settled my case with ESPN/Disney, I have decided to leave so I can exercise my first amendment rights more freely. I am grateful for so many wonderful experiences over the past 16 years and am excited for my next chapter!
Life update.
Having successfully settled my case with ESPN/Disney, I have decided to leave so I can exercise my first amendment rights more freely. I am grateful for so many wonderful experiences over the past 16 years and am excited for my next chapter!#SteeleStrong— Sage Steele (@sagesteele) August 15, 2023
“Having successfully settled my case with ESPN/Disney, I have decided to leave so I can exercise my first amendment rights more freely,” she wrote. “I am grateful for so many wonderful experiences over the past 16 years and am excited for my next chapter!”
Steele was taken off the air for 10 days in October 2021 and pulled from several high-profile jobs, like covering the New York City Marathon, the Rose Parade, and the annual ESPNW Summit, because she criticized ESPN and The Walt Disney Co.’s requirement that employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Her lawsuit, which was filed in May 2022 in Connecticut Superior Court, says this was because she criticized the requirement that employees be vaccinated against COVID-19. The lawsuit also said that she had to say sorry to the people.
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Podcast Controversy
Steele’s lawsuit says that she said bad things about ESPN while she was on a podcast presented by former NFL quarterback Jay Cutler and right after she got the vaccine to follow the policy.
She said that she accepted everyone’s choice to get vaccinated, but she thought that a corporate mandate was “sick” and “scary to me in many ways.” The claim says that she also said she didn’t want to get vaccinated, but she did so to keep her job and support her family.
Steele also said on the show that she is biracial and questioned why former President Barack Obama put “Black” on the recent U.S. Census form. She also said that female writers “need to be responsible as well” if they are called names because of how they dress.
In the lawsuit, Steele’s lawyers wrote that ESPN “forced Steele to apologize, allowed media to destroy her, and let media reports that she had been suspended go unchallenged, and allowed Steele’s colleagues to defame her in violation of company policy without so much as a reprimand,”.
In June, ESPN offered to end the case for a little more than $500,000, plus the fees and costs of the lawyers.
The terms of the deal that was announced on Tuesday were not made public right away, and Steele’s lawyers did not answer emails right away asking for comment. In a statement, ESPN only confirmed that Steele was leaving the network.
“ESPN and Sage Steele have mutually agreed to part ways,” spokesman Josh Krulewitz wrote. “We thank her for her many contributions over the years.”
