Court Rules NFL Player’s Penis Size Is a Legitimate Public Interest

In this newsletter, we sometimes tackle heavy topics related to sexual autonomy or internet censorship. And at other times, we dive into lighter fare—such as a certain NFL player’s penis size and whether his former spouse had a right to speak about it on a podcast. A federal court ruled that she did—but that doesn’t give you license to disclose intimate details about an ex and expect no consequences. Here’s the reasoning behind that decision.

The dispute is Kalil v. Kalil, involving former NFL offensive tackle Matthew Kalil and swimsuit model/online content creator Haley Kalil, known online as Haley Baylee. The couple wed in 2015 and separated in 2022.

“Haley’s remarks about the size of Matt’s penis and its impact on her health and marriage were remarks about a matter of legitimate public concern,” a court concluded earlier this month.

To take a step back: In November of last year, Haley Kalil joined model and streamer Marlon Lundgren Garcia for a Twitch livestream recorded in Minnesota, which later surfaced on YouTube. While discussing the reasons behind their divorce, Haley suggested that Matt Kalil’s penis size played a role in making sex—then marriage—challenging. Here’s the description the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota gave of the discussion:

After Garcia asked Haley a few more questions about her marriage and its dissolution, Haley typed a private message to Garcia into her phone—ostensibly to put the reasons for her divorce “into perspective.” As she typed, Haley remarked that Garcia’s face was “going to be hilarious” when he read the message. After reading the private message, Garcia thrice repeated “shut the fuck up.” Haley, nodding and smiling, said that she was being serious and that she tried “it all….[t]herapists, doctors,” even investigating “lipo type of shit.” Haley joked that her “life is a comedy and it writes itself,” and confirmed that the issue described in the private message was “the biggest factor” in the divorce.

As Garcia and Haley continued to talk, it quickly became obvious that Haley was referring to the size of Matt’s penis. “[H]e’s like 0.01 percent of the population, okay,” Haley said, adding that “[w]e tried everything…you’re going to be in tears type of shit.” Garcia responded: “That’s like one of the craziest stories I’ve heard.” Haley characterized the experience as involving “trauma I can’t put on the Internet,” but said that it was “just bad luck.” Again, Haley insisted that her ex‐husband is “such a good person” and “a really good guy.”

Later…Haley acknowledged that a certain aspect of Matt’s penis was “[t]otally fine” and “like, average,” but she then said (moving her hands along a horizontal plane) that “he was just…like two [C]oke cans stacked on top each other. Maybe even a third.”

Live your life such that the size of your genitalia is never the subject of a federal court case seems like practical advice for everyone. Yet rather than let this pass—as she did not label him as too small, for goodness’ sake—Matthew Kalil sued Haley Kalil for public disclosure of private facts.

Under Minnesota law, this privacy tort applies when someone broadcasts a private matter that is both offensive and not of legitimate public concern.

“Without question, Matt has plausibly alleged that Haley Kalil’s comments about his penis were publicized, were about a matter concerning Matt’s private life, and would be highly offensive to a reasonable person,” wrote U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz in his ruling.

Whether Haley Kalil’s remarks constituted an actionable invasion of privacy thus hinges on whether Matthew Kalil’s penis size qualifies as a matter of legitimate public concern.

Schiltz determined that it did—at least within the context of Haley Kalil’s reasons for ending the marriage.

“For at least two millennia, the private lives of public figures have been of legitimate interest to members of the public,” he noted, adding that “one of the most famous works of history—Suetonius’s The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, written in 121—is a notoriously gossipy collection of biographies of 12 leaders of ancient Rome that includes many details about their sex lives.”

And although “public curiosity does not automatically equal legitimate public concern,” Haley Kalil’s statements were made “in the course of an interview in which she was being asked about her prior marriage and its dissolution,” wrote Schiltz. “Her comments—including her comments about Matt—were about her life, her marriage, and her divorce, all of which are topics of legitimate interest to her millions of followers.” They were “not vindictive or gratuitous.”

The takeaway is that publicizing private facts about a former partner’s body parts can be protected speech in certain circumstances. But if neither you nor your partner are public figures, it’s probably best to stay quiet. And even if you are a professional athlete or swimsuit model, you can’t casually compare your ex’s body to soda cans. Put such remarks in context, and ensure the surrounding context is about legitimate public interest.

In this case, “the court is 100% correct that a person cannot tell their life story without also telling the story of those they interact with,” writes First Amendment attorney Eric Goldman. But “the court treats all of Haley’s disclosures as equally permissible, a conclusion that isn’t obvious to me.”

Goldman offers these hypothetical statements:

[a] “We were sexually incompatible”

[b] “Matt and I went to doctors to see if we could find a way to make sex not painful, but they couldn’t help”

[c] “Matt’s penis was so large that sex was painful”

[d] “Matt’s penis was so large that sex was painful” (accompanied by illustrative hand gestures)

[e] “Matt’s penis is 10 inches long and 8 inches in circumference, and this made sex painful.” (Note: A Coca-Cola can is 4.83 inches high and 8.17 inches in circumference, so this is essentially what Haley was implying).

He suggests that it’s acceptable for Haley Kalil to have publicly stated the first three, but that “the hand gestures and the Coca-Cola can analogy” push things too far.

Goldman also argues that the Kalils’ celebrity status is immaterial here. “I think private individuals should be equally free to disclose statements [a]-[c] as part of telling their life stories, regardless of the celebrity status of anyone involved, and I don’t think the detailed disclosures in statements [d] or [e] should be fair game only because the described person is a celebrity,” he writes.

Given the rise of noncelebrity figures online, setting speech rules based on how famous someone is seems to drift into minutiae. Perhaps the safest—and certainly the most tactful—course is not to discuss an ex-partner’s intimate parts publicly and in detail in the first place.

In the News

Match’s new trad-dating app: The company behind Match, Tinder, and Hinge is reintroducing a trad-dating platform called Upward. It’s “formerly a Christian dating app but now a home for anyone who wants to settle down—the old-fashioned way,” notes Faith Hill at The Atlantic:

“This is modern courtship in action,” reads the company’s press release. “Women are clear about their standards, men pursue with purpose, and both move toward marriage together.”

There are already plenty of dating apps that emphasize the goal of marriage, of course. On Hinge or Tinder or Bumble, you can specify the relationship type you’re seeking and whether you want children. What Match is banking on isn’t merely a desire for matrimony or parenthood. It’s leaning into what some would call a regressive cultural habit: the idea that men and women should behave in a traditional script and value certain outcomes. Internally, Match refers to Upward’s audience as the “next-gen traditionalists.” Now the company is betting on that demographic.

On Substack

The divorce decline is real—but there’s a catch. By Stephanie Murray:

Is divorce truly on the decline? Or is there something off with how we measure it? That’s what the authors of this study aim to determine. Combining data from the National Survey of Family Growth and the Health and Retirement Study, they track women’s divorce rates from 1970 to 2019 and compare them with federal vital statistics and other surveys. Ultimately, they conclude that the drop in divorce is real: according to their estimates, it’s been falling since around 1980. This trend holds even when separations are counted as part of divorce. Notably, when you include breakups among cohabiting couples, the decline disappears. The overall breakups (divorces, separations, and dissolution of cohabiting couples) have, if anything, edged up since the 1980s.

That gets at a puzzling aspect of discussions about marriage rates and modern romance: fewer marriages are occurring, but the marriages that do exist often appear sturdier. Some people lament lower marriage rates, but it seems a worthwhile trade-off. It implies that fewer people are treating marriage as a goal worth accepting a poor partner or mediocre relationship for, and more individuals are weighing who to marry with greater seriousness.

The cohabitation element isn’t surprising, since younger couples, those with one or both partners unsure about the relationship, or those with more unstable patterns are more likely to live together without marrying. Taken together, these factors imply that many marriages that would have ended in divorce are now simply cohabitations that dissolve.

Read This Thread

There is no good reason for mosquitoes to exist in wealthy countries today.

New technologies can get rid of the mosquito species that cause diseases like dengue, yellow fever, and malaria; and others can prevent them from carrying those diseases.https://t.co/VxjlSKFmLL

So why…

— Saloni (@salonium) September 29, 2026

More Sex & Tech News

• An innocent Tennessee grandmother spent six months in jail after facial-recognition software flagged her as a possible lead in a bank-fraud case. But Reason’s Autumn Billings argues that it wasn’t the tech that put her behind bars—poor policing did.

• Operation Coast to Coast “is a privately coordinated and funded nationwide sting operation with local task forces mimicking” federal teams, notes Tara Burns. She provides additional details on the arrests—mostly for prostitution or solicitation—here.

• What would sex and marriage look like in a matriarchy? One observation is that there appears to be less emphasis on lifelong monogamy in matriarchal systems, according to Cartoons Hate Her.

• Katherine Dee reviews I Want to Be Famous: When Everybody and Nobody Is a Celebrity. “When it comes to the sometimes bewildering world of traditional celebrity—people who appear on television, in movies, or in music—this is one of the best books I’ve read on the topic,” writes Dee. “Yet, as much as I enjoyed I Want to Be Famous, it surprisingly omits a crucial aspect: how the internet reshaped celebrity for both the famous and ordinary people alike.”

• The Guardian reports that TikTok has agreed to pay Alabama at least $100 million and impose time limits and other safeguards for teenage users, a settlement modeled after Meta’s recent agreement with U.S. states. Reason‘s Meagan O’Rourke weighs in:

At best, state-imposed social media restrictions are political theater; users often learn to bypass them. At worst, they amount to chilling censorship orders. If more safety measures are enforced, large portions of the internet could become age-gated. Officials may feel they’re protecting children by securing settlements with social platforms, but they’re making the internet less free for adults and guiding kids toward less-visible corners of the web.

• “Surveillance pricing” bans are a solution seeking a problem.

• The AI-driven election?

The voters are now worrying more about AI overpowering human control, rather than worrying about job losses.

A shift from just half a year ago. https://t.co/RQvsJElYd4 pic.twitter.com/5E2RK4msUM

— Avery James (@averyfjames) September 25, 2026