Former Dolphins coach Brian Flores’ racial discrimination lawsuit had its first pretrial conference in a New York court Monday, where Flores’ lawyers continued to push back against the NFL’s attempt to move the case to arbitration.
The Associated Press reported that attorney Douglas Wigdor called such a move “unconscionable” because league commissioner Roger Goodell would be the arbitrator in that situation.
According to AP, former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, representing the NFL, told Judge Valerie E. Caproni that the league believes all claims in the lawsuit must be moved to arbitration according to the terms of employment agreements.
Wigdor said the league demonstrated “this unconscionable bias of the arbitrator” when the NFL said the claims in the lawsuit were without merit after it was first filed. He said it would not be fair for Goodell to arbitrate the claims after he earned $120 million over the last two years from the league’s teams.
Lynch said she invited the three coaches and their lawyers to meet with league officials to discuss the “important issues” surrounding racial inclusion that the NFL seeks to address.
“Today, they declined to meet with us,” she said, according to AP.
According to AP, Wigdor said he rejected the league’s invitation to discuss racial issues because there would be no magistrate judge or judge present. He also said he rejected the league’s invitation to discuss racial issues because there would be no magistrate judge or judge present.
Flores, who was fired by the Dolphins in January and was later hired by the Pittsburgh Steelers as an assistant, is accusing the league of racial discrimination in its hiring and firing practices, along with allegations that multiple teams conducted sham interviews with him for head-coaching vacancies.
Two Black coaches, Steve Wilks and Ray Horton, joined Flores’ lawsuit earlier in the month, accusing the Arizona Cardinals and Tennessee Titans, respectively, of racial discrimination. Wilks, who was head coach of the Cardinals for the 2018 season and was fired after a 3-13 finish, was hired as a “bridge coach and was not given any meaningful chance to succeed.” Wilks, who is Black,” was replaced by Kliff Kingsbury, who is white and had no NFL head coaching experience.
Horton, who is also Black, claims he was given a “completely sham interview” for the Titans’ opening in January 2016. In a 2020 podcast interview, Mike Mularkey, who was hired over Horton, says Titans management informed him he was getting the job even as interviews were still being conducted.
The league’s lawyers said the two have not “identif[ied] any particular employment practice that is causing a disparate impact on Black coaches or coaching candidates.”
Flores is also accusing Dolphins owner Stephen Ross of offering $100,000 per loss during the 2019 season, allegations he has denied.
