Last year, then-ESPN analyst Sage Steele caused quite a stir when she chose to speak out against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas on social media. And she claims that her employer tried to get her to stop sharing her opinions.
This week, Steele appeared on OutKick’s ‘Gaines for Girls’ podcast with anti-trans athlete activist Riley Gaines, who is a former Kentucky swimmer who competed against Thomas. During her conversation with Gaines, Steele claimed that ESPN told her to stop posting about her opinions on Thomas and transgender athletes.
“I was asked to stop tweeting about it. I was asked to stop doing anything [and] saying anything about it on social media because I was offending others at the company. I made sure I sent up another tweet that night after I received that email because like, no,” Steele told Gaines, according to the New York Post.
Steele claimed that ESPN told the same thing to fellow analyst Sam Ponder, but allowed others to speak on topics that were “not related to sports.”
“Let’s stop living in this lie,” Steele said. “And once again, oh, you’re going to you’re to silence me and Sam. She was told the same thing, for this issue, but they were going to let everybody else talk about all these other things that are not even related to sports on our sports programming.”
Steele said that this directive from ESPN came even after Steele brought forth a lawsuit against ESPN in which she claimed that free speech rights were violated.
“I already had the lawsuit going. I didn’t know how it was going to end,” Steele said. “But I literally said, ‘This is the hill I will die on 100 percent because it’s facts.’ This is not even my opinion about a vaccine mandate or whatever, these are facts. This is science, this is biology. This is all of the things. Come at me. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me to stop supporting women. Go ahead, tell me.”
Steele ultimately chose to ignore ESPN’s pleas and continued sharing her opinions on social media before she ultimately left ESPN, saying that she was leaving the network to “exercise my First Amendment rights more freely.”
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