Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier says the NFL’s Rooney Rule violates Florida law. Does it?

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is going after the National Football League.

Uthmeier, who has used his position to challenge diversity, equity and inclusion policies before, told the NFL that its "Rooney Rule" is discriminatory and illegal in Florida, and ordered the league to stop enforcing it. 

"The NFL's use of the Rooney Rule violates Florida law by requiring race-based considerations in hiring," Uthmeier said in a March 25 video posted on X. "Florida law is clear: Hiring decisions cannot be based on race. And the Rooney Rule mandates race-based interviews and incentivizes race-based decisions. That's discrimination."

The NFL’s Rooney Rule requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching, coordinator and front office positions. It also requires each team to employ one woman or one person from an ethnic minority to be an offensive coaching assistant with certain qualifications.

In a March 25 letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Uthmeier said the league’s policy violates Florida’s Civil Rights Act because it requires teams to "limit, segregate, and classify applicants for certain employment and training opportunities because of race and sex" and does so in a way that "tends to deprive applicants of opportunities for employment." 

Uthmeier told the league to confirm by May 1 that it would stop enforcing the rule or else the state may take "civil rights enforcement action" against it.

Speaking to reporters in Phoenix March 31, Goodell stood by the NFL’s enforcement of the Rooney Rule, calling it consistent with state laws. "One thing that doesn’t change is for our values, and we believe that diversity has been a benefit to the National Football League," Goodell said. 

Whether Uthmeier’s argument would hold up in court depends largely on who he says is being harmed by the rule and how, legal experts told us.

"Is it another candidate who isn’t considered because a team doesn't have the time because they have to interview a minority candidate?" said Jason Bent, an Illinois Tech University law professor and Stetson University visiting professor of employment discrimination law. "Or is it a team’s first choice for a position who has to wait for them to interview minority candidates? Does that make you an aggrieved person? It’s not clear."

Anti-discrimination law is meant to stop employers from denying particular people or groups of people equal opportunity on the basis of protected characteristics, said Rachel Arnow-Richman, a University of Florida employment law professor. Under state and federal law, such characteristics include race, color, sex, national origin and disability.

"What is absent from the attorney general’s assertion is the identification of any person who was discriminated against because of the policy," she said. "Because, right now, he is simply telling the NFL to declare their practice unlawful."

Uthmeier’s ultimatum could affect the hiring practices of Florida's three professional football teams, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Miami Dolphins and the Jacksonville Jaguars.

PolitiFact reached out to Uthmeier and the NFL for comment but did not hear back.

What is the Rooney Rule and why did the NFL institute it?

The NFL created the Rooney Rule in 2003 to bolster the number of minority coaches and executives in the league based on recommendations from the NFL’s Workplace Diversity Committee, now known as its Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee. The rule was named after then-chairman Dan Rooney, the late owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers who spearheaded the policy.

The committee’s initial focus was on how few minorities held NFL head coaching positions despite the league’s high number of Black players. There were only three Black head coaches in the 2001-02 season, and by the end of it, two had been fired. 

From 2000 through 2024, The Associated Press found that 31 of 173 new NFL coaches — 18% — were Black.

The NFL’s head coaches during the 2026 annual meeting on March 30, 2026, in Phoenix. There are currently three Black head coaches in the league going into the NFL’s 2026 season. (AP)

The league broadened the rule beyond head coaching positions over the years, requiring teams to interview at least two candidates of color for all senior football operations positions. 

In 2022, the league also started requiring teams to employ "one female or minority coach as an offensive assistant," provided the person has three or more years of collegiate or professional experience. The NFL established a league-wide fund to help teams pay for the position, reimbursing them up to 50% of the assistant’s salary. 

The NFL says on its website that the Rooney Rule gives promising and qualified candidates the opportunity to excel, adding diversity that "enriches the game and creates a more effective, quality organization from top to bottom."

At the NFL’s meeting, Goodell said the rule isn’t a hiring mandate but is intended to identify diverse candidates and hire the best talent. He said he would engage with Uthmeier to discuss the policy, which he said is used in many industries.

Pittsburgh Steelers team President Art Rooney II, Dan Rooney’s son, also said he didn’t anticipate that Uthmeier’s stance would prompt significant change.

"We always are looking at our employment policy," Rooney told reporters. "Every year we do an analysis of what we’re doing and what we can do to improve the situation. But I don’t expect any major changes."

What does Florida law say and does the Rooney Rule violate it?

Closely mirroring the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, Florida’s Civil Rights Act of 1992, prohibits employers from discriminating against people with respect to compensation, terms, conditions or privileges of employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, handicap or marital status. 

One part of the law Uthmeier is focusing on says employers must not "limit, segregate, or classify" applicants in "any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities, or adversely affect any individual’s status as an employee," because of their race, sex, age or other protected characteristics. 

N. Jeremi Duru, who teaches sports law and civil procedure at American University, argued in a 2025 paper that the rule is positioned to withstand that legal argument.

NFL teams "do seemingly ‘classify applicants for employment’ in that they identify some candidates as being of color and others as not being of color," Duru said. But both the federal and Florida statutes only prohibit such classification when it "would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities."

No such deprivation exists in the case of the Rooney Rule, Duru argued, citing court cases that found claimants must show the employer’s action or policy tended to deprive them of a job opportunity. 

"While the rule mandates that at least two people of color be interviewed for particular positions, it does not deprive any individual of the opportunity to interview," he said, adding that teams may interview as many candidates as they want.

In 2024 for example, the eight NFL teams searching for a new head coach interviewed an average of nine candidates for the position, Duru found. In every case but two, "white interviewees outnumbered interviewees of color," he said. 

The Rooney Rule is a prominent example of employers’ longstanding practices to try to diversify applicant and interview pools.

"This was around long before DEI was in the political crosshairs, or was even a term," Arnow-Richman said, who called broadening the talent search a best practice for increasing hiring representation. "There is a big difference between increasing representation and discriminating against white people."

Such policies aim to add more applicants to the interviewing process, not reduce the number of white or male applicants or replace them with minority candidates.

Legal experts think the rule’s biggest possible liability is its requirement for teams to employ one person of color or woman as an offensive assistant. "This is the clearest potential vulnerability for the NFL," Bent said, because state and federal civil rights law doesn’t allow for employer-mandated quotas.

The NFL, meanwhile, frames the rule as a way to add to the career pipeline, rather than setting any hard quotas for established roles. The league’s fund that helps pay for the position as a new, added role could help the NFL defend the rule in court, experts said, and the qualification requirements could show that the program is merit-based.

So far, no lawsuit has successfully claimed the Rooney Rule is unlawful under anti-discrimination law.  But that could change as pending federal complaints target the policy. 

One is from America First Legal, a conservative organization founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller. 

In 2024, the group filed a federal complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the rule, arguing it illegally discriminates against white candidates under the Civil Rights Act. The EEOC enforces laws prohibiting workplace discrimination and investigates complaints against employers.

A 2022 class action lawsuit by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, who is Black, makes a different claim. Flores alleges that the NFL engages in racist hiring practices and sham interviews to satisfy the rule after he learned a head coaching position he was scheduled to interview for had already been filled by a white coach.

In Uthmeier’s case, legal experts said his biggest challenge is proving that white, male NFL applicants are being deprived of opportunities in a league where most top executives and head coaches remain disproportionately white and male.

"It’s unclear how this is going to play out. It’s going to depend on how a case is brought and the way it asserts that the rule violates state law," Bent said. "But the Rooney Rule is a high profile target and fits perfectly with what the federal government is doing with DEI, it’s not surprising an attorney general aligned with the administration would come for it."