Aaron Rodgers invoked Martin Luther King Jr. while railing against NFL COVID-19 rules

• Aaron Rodgers railed against the NFL's COVID-19 protocols while speaking with "The Pat McAfee Show."
• It was his first public comment since testing positive for COVID-19 and was found to be unvaccinated.

Aaron Rodgers quoted Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" while criticizing the NFL's COVID-19 protocols that are in place for the 2021 season.

Speaking for the first time since he tested positive for COVID-19 and was revealed to be unvaccinated, Rodgers said that he believed the rules in place were meant to shame people into getting vaccinated.

"I think some of the rules to me are not based in science at all," Rodgers told "The Pat McAfee Show" on Friday. "They're based purely in trying to out and shame people. Like needing to wear a mask at a podium when every person in the room is vaccinated and wearing a mask makes no sense to me."

Later in the conversation, Rodgers was asked if he was aware of any potential fines or punishment that may come down from the league, at which point he invoked King's words.

"There have been conversations with it," Rodgers said, regarding a potential league response. "I would add this to the mix as an aside, but the great MLK said you have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense. "

"In my opinion, it makes no sense to me. I test every single day. Every single day. So we play in Arizona on Thursday, we come back, guys leave for the weekend, I don't. We test every single day, early in the morning."

King's original quote was written in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail," after King was arrested during a march.

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws," King wrote. "Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all.'"

Rodgers continued:

"If I test in the morning and I wear a mask through the entire facility, and you want me to wear a mask just to shame me that I'm not vaccinated, to continue to perpetuate a story that I'm not vaccinated, in a room where the only way you can get in that room is if you're fully vaccinated against a virus that I don't have as a non-vaccinated person. Not to mention that you are sitting more than six feet away from me, in most cases at least 20 feet away from me.

"Where's the science in that? Where's the science in that that says, oh, that makes perfect sense? So it was my opinion that that wasn't rooted in any science. Every other protocol I followed to the T."