After five long years, the legal saga of former Sacramento Kings announcer Grant Napear may be finally coming to an end.
In 2020, in the midst of social justice protests after the police killing of Michael Brown in Minneapolis, Napear responded to a tweet from former Kings star DeMarcus Cousins. He responded in all caps “ALL LIVES MATTER…EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!” at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement.
This tweet led to his firing from his local radio station job in Sacramento at KHTK and resigning from his position as the play-by-play voice of the Kings that he had held since 1998 in the controversy that followed.
But after years of fighting against the owners of the radio station in court in multiple lawsuits, it looks like the case may have finally reached the end of the road.
According to the Sacramento Bee, Napear’s case alleging wrongful termination was dismissed in federal court after the judge found ruling in his favor would be unconstitutional.
Former Sacramento Kings broadcaster Grant Napear lost his bid to regain his radio talk show after a federal judge dismissed his wrongful termination lawsuit against KHTK-AM’s owner, court records show.
Napear lost his position at Sactown Sports 1140 in 2020, after posting “ALL LIVES MATTER … EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!” on social media in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed man in Minneapolis. The tweet was widely interpreted as an expression of opposition to the growing Black Lives Matter movement, although Napear has denied that was his intent.
Napear’s case was formally ended last week in federal court in Sacramento after Judge Dale A. Drozd ruled that it would be unconstitutional to apply California labor laws protecting the political rights of employees to the company’s action in firing Napear.
Napear had also seen a discrimination lawsuit dismissed in 2023 where he alleged that he was fired because he was white, male, and Unitarian. In that instance, a judge found that the former Kings announcer did not provide evidence that he lost his job because of his gender, ethnicity, or religious faith. The wrongful termination lawsuit dated all the way back to 2021.
Although he’s now seen both claims alleging wrongdoing over his firing thrown out, the lawyers of Grant Napear say that he plans to appeal. The announcer is still active with a podcast that covers the Kings and the NBA where he is joined by longtime former broadcast partner Gerry Reynolds.