{"id":207041,"date":"2026-03-26T15:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T15:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/207041\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T15:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T15:45:08","slug":"florida-ag-james-uthmeier-warns-nfl-rooney-rule-illegal-under-state-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/207041\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida AG James Uthmeier warns NFL Rooney Rule \u2018illegal\u2019 under state law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier warned NFL officials Wednesday that the Rooney Rule and other similar hiring policies \u201care \u2018illegal\u2019 under Florida\u2019s civil rights laws,\u201d according to Andrew Atterbury of POLITICO. In a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, Uthmeier \u201cpressed the NFL to confirm by May 1 it would no longer enforce its policies requiring teams to interview minority candidates, including women, or else the state could take \u2018civil rights enforcement action.\u2019\u201d The move by Uthmeier \u201caligns with ongoing attempts by Florida\u2019s conservative leaders to rid the state of diversity, equity and inclusion-aligned policies, from public schools to colleges and now even\u202flocal governments.\u201d But taking on the NFL, which \u201cprides itself on diversity programs like the Rooney Rule,\u201d would be a \u201csignificant escalation of that fight.\u201d Uthmeier copied several team and federal officials on his letter to the NFL, including Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, Bucs owner Bryan Glazer and Jaguars owner Shad Khan (POLITICO, 3\/25<\/a>).<\/p>\n

NEED TO DO MORE: USA TODAY\u2019s Ayrton Ostly noted this offseason saw 10 coaching vacancies in the NFL — the most since 11 were available in 2000. Of those vacancies, only one went to a minority coach (Robert Saleh to Tennessee), and zero Black head coaches were hired in a cycle for the fifth time since the Rooney Rule was established. In 2026, the NFL will have three Black head coaches out of 32 in a league in which \u201croughly 70% of players are Black.\u201d Goodell acknowledged that the league \u201cneeds to re-evaluate its accelerator program designed to help minority candidates\u201d (USA TODAY, 3\/25<\/a>). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier warned NFL officials Wednesday that the Rooney Rule and other similar hiring policies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,119],"class_list":["post-207041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-nfl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}