Attorney General James Uthmeier isn’t satisfied with the National Football League’s response to his March letter requesting it suspend the “Rooney Rule” requiring teams to interview minority candidates for head coach and other executive and leadership positions.
Now, he’s issuing a subpoena to the NFL and maintaining the rule runs afoul of Florida laws against basing hiring decisions on race.
Uthmeier wrote a letter to NFL executive vice president and general counsel Ted Ulyot on Wednesday, thanking the league for changing its website and pledging it doesn’t require teams to hire offensive assistants based on race or sex.
“Unfortunately, neither your letter nor the changes to your website assuage our concerns over the NFL’s violations of Florida law. In fact, they raise new ones,” Uthmeier wrote.
The letter later suggests the NFL could be in violation of Florida’s law against deceptive or unfair trade practices because it put out “misleading” information about its hiring practices.
“The NFL for years has repeatedly represented its commitments to, among other things, ‘diverse candidates,’ mandating teams ‘employ a female or minority coach as an offensive assistant,’ providing ‘female and minority prospects with leadership development sessions’ and other apprenticeship and training, and ‘increasing the number of minorities hired’ through ‘best hiring practices,’” Uthmeier wrote. “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.’ Why then, were they there to begin with?”
The NFL installed the Rooney Rule, named after the late Dan Rooney, who owned the Pittsburgh Steelers, to boost hiring of Black head coaches. It requires teams to interview Black candidates for coaching positions, and was later expanded to include all minorities and women for executive and other coaching positions.
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This article appears in May 10-16, 2001.