Here is some good legal analysis on the case and the points tou bring up.
First Amendment Claim:
If Sterling does bring a legal challenge, experts said Tuesday, the first thing to understand is that the First Amendment may not help him much.
“Under the First Amendment, people have the right to be morons,” said Bob Corn-Revere, a lawyer at the Davis Wright Tremaine firm and president of the First Amendment Lawyers Association.
But, Corn-Revere said, those hypothetical morons are protected only from punishment by the government itself. In this real-world case, Sterling’s punishment is coming from a private group — whose rules he agreed to obey.
“The First Amendment says ‘Congress shall make no law,’?” Corn-Revere said. “Not ‘The NBA shall have no rule.’?”
On the Property Claim:
The problem is that Sterling, as an NBA owner, had agreed to be bound by the NBA’s constitution. And that document gives the league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, broad powers to punish owners for actions including “conduct prejudicial or detrimental” to the league. Silver announced that he would fine Sterling $2.5 million, impose a lifetime team and NBA ban, and try to force a sale of the franchise.
Experts said the best of Sterling’s legal options would be trying to stop a forced sale of his team. That decision must be approved by three-quarters of the NBA’s owners. Sterling could stop it by persuading enough owners to reject the motion, or — if that doesn’t work — by persuading a judge to throw out the owners’ vote.
But even that wouldn’t be much of a victory. It would only allow Sterling to keep ownership of a team he couldn’t run — a business that might rapidly drown under the weight of his bad reputation.
