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Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Wednesday imploring the league to rescind its Rooney Rule.
The rule requires NFL organizations to interview at least two minority candidates for major positions before pulling the trigger on a hire.
Uthmeier called the Rooney Rule “illegal” and “blatant racial and gender discrimination.”
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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell speaks during his State of the NFL press conference Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, in San Jose, Calif., before the Super Bowl 60 football game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. (AP Photo/Matt York)
“As applied in Florida, the NFL’s ‘Rooney Rule,’ which governs the hiring of certain team managers and coaches, blatantly violates Florida law. The same is true of the NFL’s ‘diversity’ initiatives,” Uthmeier wrote in the letter.
“The Florida Civil Rights Act prohibits employers from failing[ing] or refuse[ing] hire any individual”; ‘limit[ing]separate[ing]or classify[ing] employees or applicants for employment in a manner that would deprive or tend to deprive any person of employment opportunities”; and ‘discriminate[ing] against any person with respect to compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment” because of “the person’s race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, or marital status,” the letter continues.
“The law also prohibits employers from discriminating based on these same characteristics “in admission to… any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training.” The Rooney Rule and its ramifications require precisely what Florida law prohibits. They require teams to limit, segregate and classify applicants for certain employment and training opportunities based on their race and gender. And they do it in a way that tends to deprive candidates of employment opportunities…
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier speaks during a campaign rally for Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears at the Buckland Farmers Market October 29, 2025, in New Baltimore, Virginia. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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“The NFL’s Executive Vice President of Operations (Troy Vincent Sr.) acknowledged that the NFL should create ‘a work culture that does not require a mandate to interview people of color and minorities.’ NFL fans in Florida don’t care about the color of their coach’s skin, they care about what colors their coach wears and whether those colors win on the football field.
Uthmeier then asked Goodell to “please confirm no later than May 1, 2026 that the NFL will no longer enforce the Rooney Rule or any variation or extension thereof, which requires consideration of race, gender or any other prohibited classification, on Florida teams.” Failure to provide such confirmation may result in civil rights enforcement action. »
The NFL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Rooney Rule took effect in 2003. As of publication, three NFL head coaches are black and none have been hired this offseason, although several have been hired for coordinator positions.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell speaks to the media during the NFL League Annual Meeting at The Breakers on April 1, 2025. (Jim Rassol-Imagn Images)
Meanwhile, Brian Flores, Steve Wilks and Ray Horton have a discrimination case against the NFL, with Flores claiming the league was “rife with racism” when it came to its coaching hiring practices.
