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14 Tex. Rev. Ent. & Sports L. 165 (2012-2013)
Collective Sanctions: Learning from the NFL's Justifiable Use of Group Punishment

handle is hein.journals/tresl14 and id is 185 raw text is: Collective Sanctions: Learning from the NFL's Justifiable Use of Group Punishment Laura Peterson INTRODUCTION The Pittsburgh Steelers accumulated 101 total penalties, resulting in a loss of 854 yards, in the 2011 season.' These penalties were incurred by a single player violating an NFL rule, yet the penalties are listed as a team aggregate in ESPN's NFL statistics.2 This is unlikely to raise many eyebrows. For many people, it is perfectly acceptable to sanction the entire team through lost yards, even though only one player caused the violation. Contrast this scenario with that of Shelly Anderson, a 33-year-old woman with stage five renal failure and three children under the age of 15. Anderson faced eviction from her home in Virginia's public housing system for crimes she did not commit.4 Her mother and children's father were arrested for possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia when they were in Anderson's home while she received dialysis treatment.5 Under the One Strike and You're Out eviction policy enacted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, public housing authorities across the country can evict residents and their families if any member of the household or any guest engages in certain types of criminal activity. Anderson's story is not unique. According to The Chicago Reporter, eighty-six percent of Chicago's one-strike evictions in 2010 were not due to criminal activity by the person named on the lease.7 Even amidst widespread criticism for stories like Anderson's, the United States Supreme Court upheld the One Strike policy in 2002.8 These seemingly unrelated anecdotes - Steelers' penalties and the One Strike eviction policy - share the same classification as forms of collective sanctions.9 1. The Steelers were chosen at random from ESPN's statistics, not because they had the most or least penalties. Pittsburgh Steelers Statistics 2012, ESPN, http://espn.go.com/nfl/team/stats/ /type/team/name/pit/pitts burgh-steelers (last visited April 18, 2013). 2. Id. 3. Arin Greenwood, 'One Strike' Public Housing Policy Hits Virginia Woman Who Needs Kidney Transplant, HUFFINGTON POsT (Dec. 22, 2011), http://www.hufmingtonpost.com/2011/12/22/one-strike-policy- housing-alexandria-virginia-kidney-transplant n 1151639.html. 4. Id. 5. Id 6. See U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, One Strike and You're Out Screening and Eviction Policies for Public Housing Authorities (HAs), HUD.GOV (1996), http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/huddoc?id=DOC_10981.pdf. 7. Angela Caputo, One and done, THE CHICAGO REPORTER (Sept. 04, 2011), http://www.chicagoreporter.com/news/2011/09/one-and-done. 8. See Dep't of Hous. & Urban Dev. v. Rucker, 535 U.S. 125 (2002). 9. For purposes of this article, collective sanctions are defined as forms of punishment imposed not only on the responsible individual, but also their relevant group. 165