NFL faces legal challenge over ‘racist’ Rooney Rule

The NFL’s “Rooney Rule” is racist, according to a challenge from America First Legal. On Tuesday, the non-profit filed a federal civil rights complaint against the league.

NFL owners adopted the Rooney Rule in 2003 to “increase the number of minorities hired in head coach, general manager, and executive positions.” 

Current guidelines require teams to interview two minority candidates before filling a vacancy.

“When millions of Americans tune in to the Super Bowl, they will be watching meritocracy in action; the best players, on the best teams, with the best coaches,” AFL senior advisor Ian Prior said. “Yet, every year during this time NFL teams must follow the ’Rooney Rule’ and interview prospective coaches and executives, not because of their skill and hard work, but rather because of the color of their skin.”

“It is abundantly clear that the NFL and its member teams do indeed limit, segregate, or classify their employees or applicants for employment in ways that deprive at least some individuals of interview and employment opportunities specifically because of race, color, or sex,” Prior wrote.

The conservative America First Legal was founded by former senior Trump White House advisor Stephen Miller in February 2021.

The Rooney Rule has been controversial since its inception, dismissed as a racial quota system by critics on the right and denounced as an ineffective sham by activists on the left.  

Demaurice Smith, a former executive director for the NFL Players’ Association, wrote last year that teams are putting minority candidates through sham interviews to meet the NFL’s criteria.

“The NFL and its member teams have failed to implement any policies, including the Rooney Rule, that are capable of effectuating sustainable racial and gender diversity in their coaching and executive ranks,” Smith wrote in the piece for the Yale Law and Policy Review. “At best, the Rooney Rule was simply designed to change the composition of NFL owners’ candidate pools, not to dictate or enforce a set of criteria owners must use to make hiring decisions.”

In the 2024 hiring cycle, four NFL teams hired minority coaches. At his annual press conference on Monday, Commissioner Roger Goodell said the Rooney Rule is still necessary.

“Not having it be necessary would be a wonderful world for us,” Goodell said. “I personally believe that it’s still necessary because I think we want to show the benefits of looking at a diverse slate of candidates.”

Eight of the league’s 32 current head coaches are minorities. 

Prior believes it’s time to end the NFL’s diversity initiatives, including the Rooney Rule.

“This process is not only insulting and condescending to prospective coaches who are merely interviewed to check a box, but it is also the exact kind of racial balancing that the Supreme Court of the United States has unequivocally denounced as illegal and anathema to equal protection under the law,” Prior said. 

“If the National Football League truly wants to end discrimination in the employment process, then the NFL should stop discriminating in the employment process, follow the meritocratic system it displays on the field, and eliminate the Rooney Rule.”