Supreme Court allows Brian Flores to sue NFL for discriminating against Black coaches

The court's decision leaves in place a ruling allowing Flores' racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL to proceed to trial.

John Fritze, Devan Cole
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The Supreme Court declined Tuesday to take up an appeal from the National Football League in a class action lawsuit from Brian Flores and other Black coaches who have claimed racial discrimination.

By passing on the appeal, the court’s decision leaves in place an appeals court ruling that allowed the lawsuit to go to trial and rejected an effort by the league to force Flores into arbitration.

Flores, who is currently the defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings, was previously a coach with the New England Patriots, the Miami Dolphins and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He sued the league in 2022, claiming systematic racism when it came to the hiring and promotion of Black coaches.

The NFL sought to force Flores and two other coaches into arbitration, an out-of-court legal process to resolve disputes viewed as less favorable to plaintiffs. But the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February balked at that effort, allowing Flores to take his claims against the league to court.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the decision to not hear the case.

Flores won in the appeals court because of how the NFL structures its arbitration requirements: It designates the league commissioner, Roger Goodell, as the default arbitrator. The 2nd Circuit said that arrangement provided “for arbitration in name only.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Jose Cabranes, nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton, wrote that the NFL’s process “fails to bear even a passing resemblance” of traditional arbitration procedures.

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“It contractually provides for no independent arbitral forum, no bilateral dispute resolution, and no procedure,” Cabranes wrote. Instead, he said, it “offends basic presumptions of our arbitration jurisprudence” by submitting Flores’ claims to the discretion of one of his opponents in the case, the NFL.

“An employer – whether a professional sports league, restaurant, retail store or otherwise – cannot force employees to arbitrate statutory employment discrimination claims before the employer’s own chief executive,” Flores’ attorneys told the Supreme Court.

But the NFL told the justices in its appeal that the appeals court ruling would give judges “free-floating discretion” to invalidate arbitration requirements based “solely on their subjective determinations” that some of the procedures are “unfair.” That, the NFL said, “undermines the very predictability and uniformity” that federal arbitration law requires.

The conservative Supreme Court has repeatedly beefed up the ability of companies to enforce arbitration agreements.