The US Supreme Court has rejected the NFL’s attempt to move the racial discrimination case into arbitration American Football News

League, including the New York Giants, Denver Broncos and Houston Texans, to move the case to the NFL’s oversight.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the National Football League’s bid to overturn a black coach’s racially-charged decision on the court and to institute legal action against the NFL.

The jury refused to hear the union’s decision and three of its groups sued after a lower court ruled that the NFL could not compel Brian Flores, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins and the current defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, to resolve allegations of workplace bias through a process overseen by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

The teams involved in the appeal were the New York Giants, Denver Broncos and Houston Texans.

Flores, 45, has criticized the NFL, the most popular sports league in the United States, for appointing black coaches.

According to his 2022 lawsuit, the NFL and several teams discriminated against blacks for coaching and administrative jobs in violation of federal and state laws. Flores filed the suit after he was fired as head coach of the Miami Dolphins despite the team winning two consecutive seasons.

Flores said that during his career, he was asked to have “fraudulent interviews” with the Giants and Broncos in order to fulfill the 2003 policy of the NFL called the Rooney Rule which requires that minorities be interviewed for coaching jobs. The NFL adopted the Rooney Rule in 2003 based on the historically low number of minorities in the NFL’s leadership positions.

Two other black coaches, Arizona Cardinals head coach Steve Wilks and former NFL assistant Ray Horton, later joined Flores as plaintiffs.

The lawsuit seeks to force the NFL to make several changes, encourage teams to hire black coaches and general managers, and require teams to explain hiring and termination decisions in the draft.

The NFL, which has denied allegations of discrimination, responded to the lawsuit by saying it should be dismissed as without legal merit, or sent to arbitration.

A federal judge in New York in 2023 ruled that the NFL and ⁠The Giants, Broncos and Texans must face what Flores says about racial discrimination against black coaches in the league, and sent some parts of the case to a private division.

On appeal, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York in 2025 accepted that some of Flores’ claims were in federal court. The 2nd Circuit ruled that the NFL’s statutory provision granting Goodell unilateral jurisdiction to arbitrate was “unenforceable” because it would negate Flores’ argument “in any sense”.

A conflicting agreement that “forces one party to submit its arguments to the superiors of one of the disputing parties, is a conflicting agreement in name only,” Judge Jose Cabranes wrote for the second district.