Brian Flores desires truth and transparency in the National Football League’s head coaching hiring practices.
Philosophically, it is what countless job seekers who surmise they have been subjected to discrimination or bias in surreptitious hiring processes also want. On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court helped forward the cause when it denied the NFL’s appeal to dismiss Flores’ racial discrimination lawsuit filed in February of 2022 against it and three of its teams — the Denver Broncos, New York Giants, and Houston Texans.
The ruling allows the suit to be adjudicated in a public trial in New York federal court instead of the NFL arbitration system administered by its Commissioner Roger Goodell. The Supreme Court decision, with only Justice Brett Kavanaugh out of the nine justices dissenting, maintains a lower court decision, which was upheld by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in April of 2025, granting Flores’ case to proceed in federal court.
Now, in a public setting, details of Flores’ interviews with the Giants and Texans, the two teams with which he met during the league’s 2022 hiring cycle, will be revealed.
“The NFL must now accept that its commissioner cannot be the arbitrator over discrimination claims against the league and its teams. We look forward to litigating these claims in court,” David Gottlieb and Douglas Wigdor, Flores’ attorneys representing him, Horton and Wilks, in this case, said in a statement.
The 45-year-old Flores, born and raised in Brooklyn, was terminated by the Miami Dolphins as their head coach on January 10, 2022, after being hired for the position on February 4, 2019, and compiling a 24-25 record, including two winning seasons — going 10-6 in 2020 and 9-8 in 2021. The class-action suit alleges the NFL and the teams named in the suit engage in systemic racial discrimination and retaliation in their hiring, firing, and promotion practices, particularly for head coaching and general manager positions.
Two Black coaches, Ray Horton and Steve Wilks, joined the suit in April of 2022. Horton was the head coach of the USFL’s (which merged with XFL in December 2023) Pittsburgh Maulers for the 2023 season and Wilks was fired as the Jets’ defensive coordinator in this past December less than one year on the job. Flores has been the defensive coordinator for the Minnesota Vikings since 2023 after spending the 2022 season as the defensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
There are currently only three Black NFL head coaches in a 32-team league in which up to 60% of the players on active rosters are Black: The New York Jets’ Aaron Glenn, the Texans’ DeMeco Ryans, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Todd Bowles.
There were a record-tying 10 NFL head coaching openings in the most recent hiring cycle and none were filled by a Black head coach. It is also relevant to note that there are no Black majority owners of NFL franchises.
Cultural characteristics tied to race are ostensibly embedded in the psychological software of owners and other key decision-makers, influencing their assessment of candidates.