Florida subpoenas NFL leaders over diversity hiring rules - Politico

Top NFL officials, including Commissioner Roger Goodell, have publicly supported the Rooney Rule and maintain the policies help teams and the league recruit the best talent. | Adam Hunger/AP

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — State Attorney General James Uthmeier escalated his clash with the National Football League on Wednesday by subpoenaing league officials over minority hiring rules he argues violate Florida law.

Uthmeier’s threats of a civil rights lawsuit over the NFL’s Rooney Rule and similar policies garnered a response from league officials and pushed the NFL to soften language on its website. But Uthmeier, an appointee of GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, said the revisions do not go far enough as he vows to keep fighting for the repeal of NFL efforts designed to expand opportunities for minority coaches and executives.

“We appreciate how quickly the NFL changed its website in response to our letter and capitulated on some of their discriminatory hiring quotas,” Uthmeier said Wednesday on social media. “But their response raises more questions about the Rooney Rule, and we look forward to their cooperation with the investigative subpoena we issued them today.”

The subpoenas are Uthmeier’s way of keeping pressure on the NFL after he previously gave the league a May 1 deadline to scrap the Rooney Rule and other diversity hiring protocols.

Created in 2003 by the NFL’s Workplace Diversity Committee, the Rooney Rule as it exists today requires every team to interview at least two external minority candidates for open head coach, coordinator and general manager jobs. At the same time, the policy rewards teams for developing minority staff by granting them compensatory draft picks if a minority coach or executive is hired away by another franchise.

Uthmeier claims these policies run afoul of Florida’s longstanding civil rights laws by demanding teams limit, segregate and classify applicants for certain employment and training opportunities because of their race and sex.

NFL officials, in a May 1 letter, allegedly pushed back against some of Uthmeier’s arguments, contending the league “does not impose any hiring quotas.” But Uthmeier responded: “We are not convinced.”

“In the end, year after year, the NFL has bemoaned the hiring of ‘White’ coaches rather than ‘coaches of color.’” This obsession with hiring based on race is wrong,” Uthmeier wrote in a letter Wednesday to Ted Ullyot, NFL executive vice president and general counsel. “It also violates Florida law.”

NFL officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Uthmeier’s subpoenas. The May 1 NFL response was cited in the attorney general’s letter Wednesday but has not yet been provided to the public. Top NFL officials, including Commissioner Roger Goodell, have publicly supported the Rooney Rule and maintain the policies help teams and the league recruit the best talent.

Uthmeier, in the letter, noted the NFL struck “many references to … unlawful ‘inclusive hiring’ policies” from its website, calling the move a positive development. But the Republican suggested the updates “raise new concerns” under Florida’s law enforcing deceptive and unfair trade practices. Some of the changes from the NFL, as reported by ESPN, include explaining that the Rooney Rule “expands the pool of candidates considered” instead of “aims to increase the number of minorities hired” as it did previously.

“Now you say the NFL has scrubbed those representations from its website because they do not ‘accurately reflect the NFL’s current programs and policies,’” Uthmeier wrote. “Why, then, were they there to begin with?”

A civil rights lawsuit, as Uthmeier has threatened, would mount an unprecedented challenge for the NFL, putting the nation’s most popular sports league in the middle of a legal battle amid Florida’s fight against “woke” policies. The efforts by Uthmeier, who is endorsed by President Donald Trump, align with the White House’s attempts to boost scrutiny of programs they classify as diversity, equity and inclusion.

The subpoena from Uthmeier orders NFL officials to appear at the attorney general’s office in Tallahassee on June 12, according to Fox News.

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