Lists of reports on injuries violate the privacy of professional athletes

The 2025 NFL season started with new kick -off rules, a new executive director of the NFL Players Association and a new team for Aaron Rodgers.

But one thing remains the same: all the injuries of the players will always be reported to the public in detail. When a wide receiver tears its Achilles, the public will have the right to know. When a quarter-rear is broken with COVID-19, this will also be reported.

Why is health data – perhaps the most private information in modern society – is it so accessible? Regarding professional athletes, the answer involves sports betting. Since 1947, the NFL teams have been required to disclose injuries to “protect the integrity of the league” against players seeking to capitalize on interior information on the health of players. This rule occurred after a NFL commissioner discovered a sudden and spectacular change in bets after a “big” player learned that five players from the same team had the flu.

Over time, these disclosure has become unpopular to certain players, and many hoped that the injury declaration systems would be illegal, in particular after the adoption of the Portability and Responsibility Act (HIPAA). To their disappointment, however, HIPAA actually exempted team sports from the privacy rule, and professional players are generally required to renounce their rights to health confidentiality under their individual contracts and their collective negotiation agreements.

Thus, the majority of American sports leagues, including the NBA, the MLB, the National Women’s Soccer League and the Major League Soccer, are currently employing a form of injury report system. (NHL teams also regularly disclose information on the injuries of their players, but these disclosure often lacks specificity.) This means that athletes are subject to a much higher level of disclosure than other public figures, including business leaders or presidential candidates. And with the tendency to professionalize university sports, it seems that it is only a matter of time until the NCAA adopts the same model of injury declaration.

Although these disclosure can help level the rules of the game when it comes to warning betting betting, they present important problems for players and society as a whole. From an athlete’s point of view, a rival team players can use the information to target the injured part of the body of the athlete. During the most recent NBA qualifiers, for example, we feared that a player tried to intentionally hit the injured thumb of an opponent.

In addition, although these report policies generally require specificity, they also allow teams to employ an explanation of “personal reasons” in situations where the absence of a player results from a more sensitive problem, such as mental health problems or pregnancy. This system, although perhaps well intentioned, can paradoxically draw more attention to the absence of an athlete, feed public curiosity and invade the privacy of an athlete even more. In fact, a designation of “personal reasons” recently sparked speculation that Rickea Jackson, a WNBA player, was pregnant. (It was not.)

Using the designation of “personal reasons” can also perpetuate stigmata and stereotypes. Indeed, the treatment of mental health problems as “personal reasons” may imply that mental health problems are not as “real” as physical injuries or are shameful. After all, there is a long story of people hiding mental illness for fear of ostracization. Thus, the designation of “personal reasons” in situations involving mental health can inadvertently supply stigma as it was designed to approach.

From a societal point of view, these injury reports have additional problems. First, anecdotal evidence suggests that exposure to data related to betting can worsen compulsive bets. Second, even with strict application, the teams can now hide the injuries of their athletes, reported on misleading injuries. For example, in 2018, LeBron James played three games in the NBA final with a seriously injured hand, all without disclosing the injury. Thus, these reports even fail according to their own conditions.

So what can we do to solve these problems? Sports leagues should remove injury reports. Instead, these organizations could simply indicate whether an athlete will be available to play – without explanation or reference to a reason. This approach, currently adopted by certain university conferences, would provide fans with sufficient information, would avoid complicated dilemmas on how to report absences due to mental health problems or pregnancies, and protect the private information from athletes.

Certainly, our proposed solution is not perfect. This can, for example, lead to other forms of invasions of confidentiality by determined players to obtain unfair advantages. But the time has come to recognize that the protection of “sports integrity” means more than providing information on bettors. It also means protecting the intimacy and well-being of fans and athletes.

Trevan Klug is a student at the Yale School of Medicine. Yaron Covo is assistant professor at the Western box reserve University School of Law. Mihir Gupta, MD, is a deputy professor in the neurosurgery department of the Yale School of Medicine. Their next article in the Columbia Journal of Law & The ArtsEntitled “It is not” personal “: the disclosure of information on health and the physical mental distinction”, is co-written by Melisa Olgun, Mohamed Ahmed Ramy and Rayyan Darji.