This time of year the media spills a lot of ink discussing the lack of Black head coaches in the NFL, yet what receives far less attention is the potential legal liability for race discrimination that an NFL team could face. That no team has been sued for this is somewhat remarkable given that each NFL team is a multi-billion dollar company with near constant local and national media coverage and rabid fan bases. The NFL’s stark underrepresentation of Black head coaches has existed since the league’s inception over 100 years ago, and it continues through today where only one NFL team employs a Black head coach.
A Fortune 500 company with the same hiring practices as many NFL teams would almost certainly already have had multiple major lawsuits against it under anti-discrimination laws such as Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This begs the question then of what a potential race discrimination/glass ceiling case against an NFL team would look like.
Note: While a lawsuit against the entire NFL could be considered, a legal claim against an individual NFL team, as opposed to the league, is covered in this article.
The NFL’s lack of diversity among its head coaches is consistently covered by the press and has been for decades. In the early 2000s, the Fritz Pollard Alliance was created and it continues to advocate for the NFL to hire more Black head coaches and executives. Interestingly, the organization grew out of a...
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