NHL Backs Down after Ron DeSantis Criticizes Their ‘Discriminatory’ Job Fair in Florida

The NHL may have just learned a valuable lesson; don’t bring woke politics into a state with Ron DeSantis as Governor.

In a since deleted LinkedIn post, the NHL announced they were promoting an upcoming job fair in Fort Lauderdale. Sounds reasonable enough.

Except, instead of a traditional job fair open to anyone, the NHL announced it was limited to certain categories.

According to Fox News, in order to attend, the NHL said you must “identify” as a member of certain diversity demographics.

“Participants must be 18 years of age or older, based in the U.S., and identify as female, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or a person with a disability. Veterans are also welcome and encouraged to attend,” the post read.

The NHL, which has become increasingly woke, apparently decided it was an opportunity to prove their far left political credentials.

READ: NHL GOES FULL WOKE, PUBLICLY SUPPORTS TOURNAMENT SHOWCASING TRANSGENDER PLAYERS

The league seemed to think they could get away with this exclusionary practice.

Enter Ron DeSantis.

NHL Backtracks on Woke Job Fair

DeSantis and his team immediately blasted the NHL, saying the job fair amounted to “discrimination.”

Press secretary Bryan Griffin went after the league for their exclusionary practices.

“Discrimination of any sort is not welcome in the state of Florida, and we do not abide by the woke notion that discrimination should be overlooked if applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular demographic. We are fighting all discrimination in our schools and our workplaces, and we will fight it in publicly accessible places of meeting or activity,” Griffin said.

He also said the league must “immediately remove and denounce the discriminatory prohibitions it has imposed on attendance to the 2023 ‘Pathway to Hockey’ summit.”

After facing criticism for promoting their discriminatory criteria, the NHL immediately backtracked.

The league issued a statement to Fox News saying, “original wording of the LinkedIn post associated with the event was not accurate.”

The job fair was “designed to encourage all individuals to consider a career in our game – and, in particular, alert those who might not be familiar with hockey to the opportunities it offers,” the statement said.

But of course, it strains credulity to believe that the original announcement, which almost certainly had to go through many layers of approvals before being posted, was “not accurate.”

What’s most likely is that the NHL always intended the event to exclude certain types of people. When they got caught and received negative attention, they folded.

Ron DeSantis has repeatedly said that Florida stands for freedom and the death of woke politics. Many politicians claim to live by those ideals, but he actually enforces them.

Discrimination, no matter how championed by the left and mainstream media, won’t be tolerated. There are valuable lessons to be learned from how he deals with woke corporations.

The problem is that few politicians have the backbone and conviction to follow through. DeSantis does.

The NHL messed around, and they most certainly found out.