Good instinct, that correction. A hard foul is contact, and contact is battery, not assault, a distinction they cover fairly early at Georgetown Law, which is where Uthmeier went. It is the only thing about this he got right.<\/p>\n
Because there\u2019s about a century of law that makes it pretty clear nothing that happened in the Sky-Fever game is a crime. When you step onto the court, you consent to the physical contact<\/a> that is a normal, foreseeable part of the game \u2014 the elbows, the box-outs, the hard fouls that draw a whistle and a fine. That consent is why the assault statute goes quiet the second the ball is tipped, and it is why criminal prosecutions for in-game conduct are nearly nonexistent. The entire modern American canon is essentially one 1975 case<\/a>, in which a Bruin took his hockey stick to an opponent\u2019s face and the jury hung. The rare convictions that do exist come out of Canada<\/a>, involve players swinging lumber or throwing sucker punches, and produced injuries \u2014 a fractured skull, a broken neck, careers ended \u2014 that make a bloodied lip look like exactly what it is. Todd Bertuzzi drove a man\u2019s face into the ice and finished his career and he got a conditional discharge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carrington\u2019s actions were a foul, plain and simple. <\/p>\n And, of course, as Uthmeier knows, the WNBA does not have a team in Florida. Threatening to prosecute conduct in games that are not played, in a state the league does not visit, against a defendant who will never set foot in his jurisdiction is pretty obviously grandstanding. <\/p>\n Which is what Uthmeier does. This is the same AG who asked himself for a formal legal opinion<\/a> \u2014 on Martin Luther King Jr. Day \u2014 declaring that the real victims of racial discrimination are white people, and who went after law firms over their DEI policies<\/a> in a bid to piggyback on the Trump administration\u2019s war on Biglaw. The WNBA post is cut from the same cloth. Carrington, who is Black, fouled Cunningham, who is white, then posted \u201cWHITE PRIVILEGE\u201d<\/a> and tagged the Fever when she got ejected. Cunningham, already a conservative favorite for her comments opposing transgender athletes in women\u2019s sports, waved the whole race framing off. Uthmeier saw a white-grievance layup and took it.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s not subtle about it. Jezebel filed it under \u201cpick me energy,\u201d<\/a> and others<\/a> piled on, which is about right for a chief legal officer freelancing prosecutions on X for a league that doesn\u2019t play in his state.<\/p>\n Earlier:<\/strong> State AG Asks For Formal Legal Opinion From Himself<\/a> Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Florida\u2019s AG Wants To Charge WNBA Player With Crime Of Playing Basketball<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s not insult each other: it\u2019s highly unlikely that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier watched the Sky-Fever WNBA game this past Saturday. For all the performative concern about the sanctity of women\u2019s sports, no one believes he sat down with a cold one to watch women\u2019s basketball. But a clip crossed his timeline, and where the rest of us saw a flagrant foul, our boy saw a moment \u2014 ripe for newsjacking, juicy enough to turn a MAGA-elite head \u2014 and took it.<\/p>\n After the Chicago Sky\u2019s DiJonai Carrington was ejected Saturday<\/a> for a Flagrant 2 on the Indiana Fever\u2019s Sophie Cunningham \u2014 Carrington came from behind on a fast-break layup and caught Cunningham across the head and neck, drawing blood, an ejection, and a $1,000 fine, Uthmeier took to X with a warning. \u201cThe WNBA knows better than to play games down here in Florida,\u201d he posted<\/a>, \u201cbecause I\u2019ll be charging people with assault.\u201d Later, apparently after revisiting the elements, he issued a correction: \u201cI should probably clarify \u2026 assault and battery.\u201d<\/p>\n Good instinct, that correction. A hard foul is contact, and contact is battery, not assault, a distinction they cover fairly early at Georgetown Law, which is where Uthmeier went. It is the only thing about this he got right.<\/p>\n Because there\u2019s about a century of law that makes it pretty clear nothing that happened in the Sky-Fever game is a crime. When you step onto the court, you consent to the physical contact<\/a> that is a normal, foreseeable part of the game \u2014 the elbows, the box-outs, the hard fouls that draw a whistle and a fine. That consent is why the assault statute goes quiet the second the ball is tipped, and it is why criminal prosecutions for in-game conduct are nearly nonexistent. The entire modern American canon is essentially one 1975 case<\/a>, in which a Bruin took his hockey stick to an opponent\u2019s face and the jury hung. The rare convictions that do exist come out of Canada<\/a>, involve players swinging lumber or throwing sucker punches, and produced injuries \u2014 a fractured skull, a broken neck, careers ended \u2014 that make a bloodied lip look like exactly what it is. Todd Bertuzzi drove a man\u2019s face into the ice and finished his career and he got a conditional discharge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carrington\u2019s actions were a foul, plain and simple. <\/p>\n And, of course, as Uthmeier knows, the WNBA does not have a team in Florida. Threatening to prosecute conduct in games that are not played, in a state the league does not visit, against a defendant who will never set foot in his jurisdiction is pretty obviously grandstanding. <\/p>\n Which is what Uthmeier does. This is the same AG who asked himself for a formal legal opinion<\/a> \u2014 on Martin Luther King Jr. Day \u2014 declaring that the real victims of racial discrimination are white people, and who went after law firms over their DEI policies<\/a> in a bid to piggyback on the Trump administration\u2019s war on Biglaw. The WNBA post is cut from the same cloth. Carrington, who is Black, fouled Cunningham, who is white, then posted \u201cWHITE PRIVILEGE\u201d<\/a> and tagged the Fever when she got ejected. Cunningham, already a conservative favorite for her comments opposing transgender athletes in women\u2019s sports, waved the whole race framing off. Uthmeier saw a white-grievance layup and took it.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s not subtle about it. Jezebel filed it under \u201cpick me energy,\u201d<\/a> and others<\/a> piled on, which is about right for a chief legal officer freelancing prosecutions on X for a league that doesn\u2019t play in his state.<\/p>\n Earlier:<\/strong> State AG Asks For Formal Legal Opinion From Himself<\/a> Let\u2019s not insult each other: it\u2019s highly unlikely that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier watched the Sky-Fever WNBA game this past Saturday. For all the performative concern about the sanctity of women\u2019s sports, no one believes he sat down with a cold one to watch women\u2019s basketball. But a clip crossed his timeline, and where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":160220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-W8pCXc.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Florida AG Declares War On Law Firms Over DEI<\/a>
FL Attorney General Plays Stupid Games, Wins Stupid Prizes<\/a><\/p>\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2021\/06\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568.jpg?resize=174%2C160&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2015\/05\/760px-Basketball_through_hoop-300x236.jpg?resize=300%2C236&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
<\/figure>\n
Florida AG Declares War On Law Firms Over DEI<\/a>
FL Attorney General Plays Stupid Games, Wins Stupid Prizes<\/a><\/p>\n
\nKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"