Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Is The Biggest Offer The Best Offer?, Alyssa Croft

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Many people strive to be professional athletes because of the respect and accomplishment it receives. You make a lot of money, it can be glamorous, you are in commercials and magazines, and sometimes even movies. However, there are some things people do not think about when it comes to professional athletes. One of the biggest is taxation! There are so many different things athletes must think about and do because of taxes so they can take home the most amount of money possible. Athletes must be careful about who they hire to help them with their taxes because they want …

Inclusion Riders And Diversity Mandates, Emily Gold Waldman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this piece, I situate these sorts of diversity requests within the broader context of other customer/client preferences that implicate Title VII. To be sure, the “inclusion riders” are not literal customer/client requests, but rather requests from celebrities who are themselves being hired by the employer for a specific project. Broadly speaking, however, they raise the same legal issue regarding third-party preferences that implicate protected characteristics under Title VII.

As a starting point, the general rule within employment discrimination law is that customer preferences cannot justify discriminatory treatment by employers. That baseline has led courts to rule that employers cannot, …

The Need For Strict Morality Clauses In Endorsement Contracts, Caysee Kamenetsky

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

The increasing significance of morality clauses seems to directly correlate with the increase of social media platforms and avenues to live-stream events, including but not limited to Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. News of an athlete’s behavior can go viral in a matter of seconds. This leads company brands to seek broader terms in their morality clauses to allow them to disassociate themselves from the athlete. However, this is not always fair to the athlete, who might not have any idea that their personal-life choices could lead to the end of an endorsement contract.