{"id":108590,"date":"2025-08-25T10:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T10:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/108590\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T10:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T10:04:07","slug":"flores-case-against-nfl-impacts-future-of-arbitration-in-pro-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/108590\/","title":{"rendered":"Flores Case Against NFL Impacts Future of Arbitration in Pro Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt didn\u2019t take long for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit\u2019s Aug. 14 ruling <\/a>on Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores<\/a>\u2019 employment discrimination case to impact arbitration<\/a> in other pro leagues.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Aug. 18, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote cited\u00a0Flores v. New York Giants\u00a0as a reason to deny arbitration for claims brought by former NBA<\/a> referee Leroy Richardson against the league. Richardson contends the NBA violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by denying his request for a religious exemption from having to take the COVID-19<\/a> vaccine during the 2021-22 NBA season. The league terminated Richardson\u2019s employment in 2022.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBA argued that Richardson\u2019s claims are governed by arbitration language and thus should be dismissed from court. Although Cote sided with the league on several legal issues and granted the NBA summary judgment, she disagreed that the case should go to arbitration. Cote quoted\u00a0Flores\u00a0for the proposition that an arbitration agreement \u201cdoes not alter or abridge substantive rights; it merely changes how those rights will be processed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Second Circuit\u2019s ruling in\u00a0Flores\u00a0could constrain the ability of sports leagues to rely on private arbitration. Leagues use arbitration for several reasons, including to have a subject matter expert oversee a dispute and to avoid a public-facing court system that media and fans can access and observe evidence and testimony. The Second Circuit concluded that even if Flores contractually accepted arbitration, he cannot be forced to raise his claims in an arbitration process that is \u201carbitration in name only\u201d and \u201clacks\u201d basic protections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFlores accuses the Denver Broncos, New York Giants and Houston Texans, along with accompanying claims against the NFL<\/a>, of discriminating against him based on race when he interviewed for head coaching jobs. Flores levels similar claims against his former employer, the Miami Dolphins, but those claims remain subject to arbitration due to his Dolphins employment contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NFL denies the allegations and maintains that Flores accepted an arbitration process overseen by commissioner Roger Goodell. The Second Circuit disagreed. It reasoned that the Federal Arbitration Act, which governs arbitration in the U.S. and contemplates that courts ought to be deferential to arbitration decisions, contemplates an \u201cindependent\u201d process that is \u201cseparate from the parties to the dispute.\u201d Goodell, as the head of the NFL and who receives his salary from the owners of the teams that compose the NFL, doesn\u2019t meet that standard. That\u2019s especially the case, the Second Circuit observed, since Flores accuses Goodell of wrongdoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFlores contrasted with the Second Circuit letting Goodell arbitrate Tom Brady\u2019s Deflategate case in 2015-16 despite Goodell also acting as the commissioner who suspended the New England Patriots star. However, Brady\u2019s dispute involved a collectively bargained provision whereas Flores\u2019 dispute concerns the scope of an employment contract and league constitution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRichardson\u2019s case also involves collectively bargained language. The NBA and the National Basketball Referee Association (NBRA) have a CBA that contains a non-discrimination clause. It prohibits workplace discrimination based on a referee\u2019s religion (and other protected characteristics). The clause also allows a referee to bring a Title VII claim either to an arbitrator or to a court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition, in 2021, the NBA and NBRA agreed to a policy requiring that referees be vaccinated against COVID-19. The policy allowed a referee to ask for an exemption from the NBA on account of having \u201csincerely held religious objections.\u201d Referees could appeal an NBA denial to a Vaccination Exemption Board (VEB).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRichardson submitted letters from two pastors of churches in Virginia. The letters asserted that Richardson\u2019s objection was \u201cconsistent with biblical scripture, tenets and Christian ideology.\u201d One of the pastors opined the NBA\u2019s vaccine mandate and threatened firing for refusing vaccination were \u201cakin to biblical scripture in Revelations 13:16-18 which describes the requirement to receive the Mark of the Beast in order to buy or sell to survive.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBA rejected Richardson\u2019s application, and the VEB denied Richardson\u2019s appeal. The pastors\u2019 letters were deemed insufficient since, \u201cat their core,\u201d they expressed \u201csecular\u201d rather than religious \u201cconcerns\u201d about the vaccine and government mandates placed on citizens. Richardson\u2019s texts were also weighed, and they were seen as expressing secular objections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe NBA also pointed out that permitting Richardson to work as a referee would pose an undue hardship on the league, which understandably wanted to \u201cminimize the likelihood of game postponements\u201d caused by COVID-19 outbreaks. The league noted that referees travel extensively during an NBA season, which means they sit in airplanes, stay in hotels, use taxis and rideshares and partake in other activities in which they\u2019re near a lot of people. As part of their work, referees must also \u201cinteract closely with other referees and with NBA players and coaches.\u201d Because of basic NBA referee job duties, such as calling fouls and blowing whistles, wearing a mask during games isn\u2019t a viable option.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her decision, Cote weighed whether the NBA-NBRA COVID agreement barred Richardson from suing the league. After all, Richardson already had an appeal\u2014the one to the VEB, in a process that Richardson\u2019s union contractually accepted. This was arguably much like Brady, as a union member of the NFLPA, contractually accepting a process that involved arbitration in lieu of litigation.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Cote reasoned Richardson hadn\u2019t given up his chance to sue. The COVID agreement, the judge explained, \u201cdid not contain a sufficiently clear waiver of the right of NBA referees to pursue statutory claims in federal court.\u201d Cote added that for Richardson to have been deemed to relinquish his right to sue, he needed to have been explicitly warned about such consequences.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe judge wasn\u2019t persuaded by NBA counterarguments. The league asserted that Richardson\u2019s appeal to the VEB raises the same claim as the one in his lawsuit and thus should be dismissed on account of what\u2019s known as\u00a0res judicata. This is a legal principle instructing that once claims and issues have been resolved, they\u2019re over and can\u2019t appear in future cases. To that point, the VEB relied on Title VII case precedent in denying Richardson, meaning he\u2019s already had the chance to raise the same set of legal issues to the VEB. Cote, however, invoked\u00a0Flores\u00a0to tell the NBA that the COVID agreement \u201cwould have had to say more\u201d about Richardson waving statutory rights by appealing to the VEB.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the NBA didn\u2019t prevail on the question of arbitration, it did convince Cote that it should be granted summary judgment on account of undue hardship. The judge reasoned that permitting Richardson to referee games during the height of the pandemic would have been unreasonably disruptive. As a result, she granted summary judgment with respect to \u201cthe period following early December 2021.\u201d Cote also denied Richardson\u2019s motion for a summary judgment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tExpect to see pro leagues reevaluate their arbitration policies in light of\u00a0Flores\u00a0to ensure they don\u2019t see more disputes wind up in court and be written about by media companies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It didn\u2019t take long for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit\u2019s Aug. 14 ruling on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[10668,71437,4000,2304,355,349,99],"class_list":["post-108590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-arbitration","tag-brian-flores","tag-covid-19","tag-federal-courts","tag-nba","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}