Former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores will have his day in court against the NFL.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled Friday that the Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator’s ongoing discrimination lawsuit will proceed in open court.
This comes a few years after a judge ordered that some of the case, which counts Flores as well as coaches Steve Wilks and Ray Horton as plaintiffs, against the NFL and several teams will shift to the league’s internal arbitration process. Attorneys have previously argued that the NFL’s process contains several flaws.
Ultimately, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York’s latest ruling means that all of Flores’ claims will be heard in open court.
“The court’s decision recognizes that an arbitration forum in which the defendant’s own chief executive gets to decide the case would strip employees of their rights under the law,” Douglas H. Wigdor and David E. Gottlieb, the coaches’ attorneys, told ESPN in a statement. “It is long overdue for the NFL to recognize this and finally provide a fair, neutral and transparent forum for these issues to be addressed.”
In January 2022, Flores sued the NFL as well as the Denver Broncos, New York Giants and Houston Texans after the Dolphins fired him as head coach. He claimed that the NFL was “rife with racism,” specifically when it came to Black coaches’ hiring and promotion. The two additional plaintiffs, Wilks and Horton, had filed similar claims against the Arizona Cardinals and Tennessee Titans, respectively.
What makes Flores’ claims particularly noteworthy, however, is the existence of the Rooney Rule, which designates that teams must interview at least two minorities for their top level openings. Enacted in 2003, the policy was designed to prevent that the very thing that Flores claims runs rampant in the NFL: racism.
In a recent interview with Pro Football Talk, DeMaurice Smith, the former executive director of the NFL player’s association, claimed that a lack of accountability has ultimately led what was originally a well-intentioned rule to somewhat dissipate in effectiveness.
“The Rooney Rule is the only rule that I have ever seen in the history of the National Football League that they don’t follow, and they don’t enforce,” Smith said. “They have nobody that they’re accountable to, nobody to answer to.”
Added Smith: “In a closed system where they are accountable to no one, these owners simply do whatever they want to do.”