NFLPA lawyer sues union for alleged retaliation

A senior National Football League Players Association attorney filed a federal lawsuit Thursday, alleging that the union’s former executive director and two current executives conspired to keep her from cooperating with a criminal investigation into union finances.

Heather McPhee, the NFLPA’s associate general counsel since 2009, accuses top union executives and former executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. of illegal misconduct, sex discrimination, breach of fiduciary duty and retaliation as she prepared to become the star witness in a yearlong criminal inquiry, according to the lawsuit.

McPhee says she was placed on paid administrative leave for alleged workplace “misconduct” in August because she had repeatedly raised legal concerns about union leaders’ decisions and to stop her from testifying before a federal grand jury investigating the NFLPA and the Major League Baseball Players Association.

The 52-page complaint, a copy of which was obtained by ESPN, was filed Thursday by McPhee and her lawyers in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. It seeks at least $10 million in damages for her lost earning potential and as “compensation for her humiliation, embarrassment and emotional distress,” the lawsuit says.

A union spokesperson issued this statement “We are reviewing the complaint. Due to the pending litigation , we have no further comment at this time.” An attorney for Howell did not immediately respond to calls for comment on Thursday.

McPhee’s attorneys, Courtney R. Forrest and Sarah R. Fink, released a statement saying their client “believes this case reveals egregious failures by those still at the organization who owe legal and moral duties to thousands of union members. They deserve better, and she deserves accountability.”

In November 2024, McPhee first raised concerns internally at the NFLPA that decisions made by senior executives might violate labor laws governing conflicts of interest and the fulfillment of fiduciary duties. Over the following months, McPhee alleges, union leaders targeted her “in order to conceal and deflect their own misconduct and failures.”

Among her complaints, McPhee challenged the legality of the senior executive incentive plan proposed by OneTeam Partners, the $2 billion licensing company owned by the NFLPA and the MLBPA. The plan would have paid millions of dollars in bonuses to Howell, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark and other senior union executives, and is one of the areas now being investigated by federal prosecutors, ESPN has reported.

“Specifically, the … grants appeared intended to financially enrich the union’s representatives on OTP’s Board — individuals who were labor organization employees,” including Howell and Matt Curtin, a Howell hire who is now the president of Players Inc., the lawsuit says. “Labor organization representatives are prohibited under federal law from receiving anything of value… from ‘an employer’ where influence on their judgment looms.”

McPhee says she also opposed Howell’s decision to keep from NFL players an arbitrator’s ruling in January that had found evidence NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and several NFL owners had openly discussed ways to limit guaranteed contracts for star quarterbacks.

The union leaders’ decision to sign a confidentiality agreement with the NFL keeping the arbitrator’s decision “from all union members for six months” appeared to violate the collective bargaining agreement “and raised concerns about a potential violation of the NFLPA’s duty of fair representation to players,” the lawsuit states.

“The rights of union members, including those who were free agents in 2025 to have the decision and use it as leverage in their contract negotiations, was denied by agreeing with the NFL to hide it from them.”

As McPhee complained that players were being kept in the dark, top executives portrayed her as not “on [their] my team,” with Howell allegedly telling the NFLPA’s executive committee that McPhee “is a problem and we will deal with it,” the lawsuit says. The document adds that longtime union general counsel Tom DePaso “sought to undermine McPhee as ‘too intense and emotional’ and ‘making trouble'” by leaking confidential information to the media.

“McPhee was not the leaker,” the lawsuit says.

Federal prosecutors sought McPhee’s cooperation last May as a grand jury witness to testify about what she believed was criminal misconduct by Howell and other senior union officials, the lawsuit reveals.

After union leaders discovered McPhee had agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and testify, Howell and DePaso sidelined her from meetings and prohibited her from communicating with the board or players, the lawsuit alleges. And Curtin bragged to OneTeam personnel that he had “ordered the Code Red” on McPhee, according to the lawsuit.

On Aug. 12, several weeks after Howell resigned amid ESPN reports about his spending of union funds for visits to strip clubs, among other matters, his interim successor, David White, placed McPhee on paid administrative leave for alleged complaints about her “workplace behavior.” In August, sources told ESPN that McPhee was the subject of complaints alleging her failure to follow supervisors’ directions as well as allegations of bullying colleagues and disrupting the union’s work environment.

McPhee’s paid administrative leave “appears designed to prevent her from cooperating with DOJ,” McPhee alleges, adding that the workplace allegations against her, which she claims the union has still not presented to her in detail, were “pretextual, discriminatory and retaliatory.”

Multiple sources familiar with the matter told ESPN that McPhee has not yet testified before the grand jury or spoken with prosecutors. The sources said McPhee intends her civil lawsuit, which she has been writing with her lawyers this fall, as a detailed road map to alleged wrongdoing she claims to have witnessed inside the NFLPA.

The complaint contains a litany of specific allegations against current and former NFLPA leaders: Howell, DePaso, Curtin and OneTeam Partners CEO Sean Sansiveri. Along with the union itself, Howell, DePaso and Curtin are named co-defendants.

Sansiveri has not responded to several calls and messages from ESPN since May. An outside lawyer for OneTeam Partners also did not immediately respond.

Multiple sources with knowledge of the criminal investigation have told ESPN that prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York are looking into alleged financial misconduct, misuse of union funds and retaliatory actions by current and former NFLPA and MLBPA officials. The criminal inquiry was triggered by a whistleblower complaint filed against Clark with the National Labor Relations Board in November 2024, alleging self-dealing, misuse of resources, abuse of power and nepotism.

In her lawsuit, McPhee details what she calls “the scheme to enrich union members’ representatives” on the OneTeam Partners board via the executive incentive plan put together by company and union executives in 2023 and 2024 but apparently never implemented.

OneTeam Partners was founded in 2019 by the NFLPA, MLBPA and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners to offer players’ licensing rights for video games, trading cards and other products. Initially, OneTeam was valued at $375 million, but by 2022, the company’s valuation zoomed to $2 billion when RedBird Capital sold its shares.

McPhee’s claim alleges Sansiveri was working as both general counsel of NFL Players Inc. and CEO of OneTeam in the summer of 2023 when he drafted a binding term sheet for an incentive plan that would have benefited himself, Howell, Curtin, Clark and others.

The lawsuit says NFLPA members’ corporate lawyers “were never made aware” of the creation of the new senior executives’ bonus plan. McPhee alleges that the plan was “not in the best fiduciary interest of the union owners” of OneTeam Partners. Executives, including Sansiveri, stood to realize millions in personal income in 2027 because of the plan, the lawsuit alleges.

Rather than grant bonuses directly to union executives, the OTP board instead enacted a plan to have the cash allocated to the unions, which would then pay bonuses directly to the union executives, the lawsuit says. The lawsuit alleges that executives’ attempt to “get around this” arrangement “would likely be a criminal violation of labor laws for both the individual labor representatives” and OneTeam.

As of the lawsuit’s filing, the OTP board decision to grant the bonus funds to executives through the unions has not been revoked, the complaint states.

McPhee also alleges that the NFLPA conducted a flawed outside legal inquiry into this plan that Howell had complained was “upsetting” OneTeam board members “and hurting the company’s ability to conduct business.” McPhee’s suit alleges that Howell and Clark launched “a pressure campaign to shut down a thorough review” of the OneTeam bonus plan that would have paid millions to both men.

According to the complaint, Sansiveri repeatedly told NFLPA executive committee members that McPhee was “making a big deal about nothing” and told player-leaders that McPhee “might be a genius, but there’s a thin line between genius and crazy.”

McPhee’s complaint says she and other union officials were “stunned” when an outside legal review found no problems with the bonus plan’s legality. DePaso “appeared satisfied with the report, and after reviewing it, approved ending the investigation of OneTeam without taking any corrective action,” the lawsuit says.

As for her administrative leave, McPhee says the union took no action against senior male executives who she says failed to file annual labor disclosures or who were investigated for toxic behavior.