The Guardian reports:

The US Justice Department has launched a civil rights investigation into Major League Baseball after the league criticized three San Francisco Giants players who wrote Bible verses on their hats during the team’s Pride Night. MLB said in a statement on Monday that writing on hats “violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations.”

Assistant US attorney general Harmeet Dhillon wrote a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred saying the justice department had referred the league to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate whether the discipline amounts to religious discrimination.

“The Civil Rights Act prohibits MLB and its franchises from unreasonably burdening the rights of players with religious objections to serving as the League’s vehicle for pro-Pride messages,” Dhillon said in the letter. “Federal law is clear: employers must modify their uniform requirements to reasonably accommodate their employees’ exercise of religion.”

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