Heather McPhee, associate general counsel for the NFL Players Association since 2009, was reportedly fired by the union in late December, according to court documents obtained by ESPN.
Just weeks earlier, McPhee had sued the union, alleging that former executive director Lloyd Howell Jr. and two current top union executives conspired to prevent her from cooperating with a criminal investigation into union finances, ESPN’s Don Van Natta Jr. reported.
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McPhee was placed on paid administrative leave on Aug. 14 after she was the subject of multiple employee complaints, per Van Natta and ESPN’s Jeff Passan, that reportedly included accusations of failing to follow supervisors’ directions, bullying colleagues and disrupting the union’s work environment.
In the lawsuit, McPhee says she was placed on leave to stop her from testifying before a federal grand jury investigating the NFLPA and the Major League Baseball Players Association, according to ESPN’s report.
Months before she was placed on leave, McPhee made allegations that sparked an FBI investigation into the NFLPA, MLBPA and OneTeam Partners, their $2 billion licensing company.
McPhee is reportedly seeking at least $10 million in damages, according to the lawsuit, in which she accuses Howell of illegal misconduct, sex discrimination, breach of fiduciary duty and retaliation, per ESPN.
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Howell, who became the NFLPA’s executive director in 2022, resigned July 17. He stepped down after a tumultuous month of criticism that stemmed from Pablo Torre and Mike Florio reporting that the NFL and NFLPA covered up a ruling on a collusion grievance. An arbitrator, Christopher Droney, found that in the wake of quarterback Deshaun Watson signing a fully guaranteed $230 million contract with the Cleveland Browns ahead of the 2022 season, league executives encouraged team owners to reduce the amount of guaranteed money players received in subsequent contracts.
Droney concluded that he couldn’t prove by a “clear preponderance” that NFL teams followed suit. Still, the details revealed from that 2022 annual owners’ meeting were indelible, and so was the fact that the NFLPA reportedly agreed with the NFL to keep the collusion grievance findings under wraps. That left a stain on Howell’s reputation, as did other matters, chief among them his reported spending of union funds for visits to strip clubs.
After McPhee initially flagged concerns within the NFLPA in November 2024, regarding senior executives potentially violating labor laws governing conflicts of interest and the fulfillment of fiduciary duties, as reported by ESPN, she alleges that union leaders targeted her “in order to conceal and deflect their own misconduct and failures.”
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McPhee questioned the legality of a senior executive incentive plan proposed by OneTeam Partners that would have paid millions of dollars in bonuses to Howell, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark and others, per ESPN, which also reported that McPhee states in the suit that she opposed Howell’s decision to keep the collusion grievance findings secret.
The suit says, according to ESPN, that the union leaders signing a confidentiality agreement with the NFL “raised concerns about a potential violation of the NFLPA’s duty of fair representation to players.”
When union leaders discovered McPhee was in line to testify as a grand jury witness about what she deemed to be criminal misconduct by Howell and others, she alleges she was removed from meetings and cut off from the board and players.
McPhee was then placed on leave due to her “workplace behavior,” according to the ESPN report. McPhee believes that was a tactic to prevent her from cooperating with the DOJ.
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