Attorneys General in New York and California have opened an investigation into the NFL to determine whether they can bring lawsuits against the league under state and federal laws for workplace discrimination against protected classes.
Could be a very tough look for the NFL in the wake of the Daniel Snyder situation, and when Audacy’s legal analyst, Amy Dash, joined Craig Hoffman on Friday to discuss the investigation, it was actually worse than it sounds.
“At this point, there is enough evidence and enough active lawsuits and investigations to say they believe the NFL may be fostering a hostile workplace where people are being discriminated against,” Dash said, “and there have potentially ben active sexual harassment incidents propagated by this culture the league has cultivated.”
There’s no focus on individual teams in this investigation, just the league itself, but Dash believes the Commanders situation was a bit of a catalyst for the attorneys general to look into things.
“Those allegations against the Commanders reached Congress, who gave their information over to the attorneys general to see if there’s anything to build a case against the NFL as a participant in all this,” Dash said. “After that inquiry, six attorneys general issued a letter to the NFL saying they believe their workplace as a whole has problems. Beyond the Commanders, we also have a woman who was a VP at NFL Media who was let go and filed an age and gender discrimination case in 2022, as well as the Brian Flores lawsuit, and Jim Trotter ended up confronting Roger Goodell about it all on national television.”
The NFL’s main offices are in New York City and Los Angeles, hence the New York and California attorneys opening this investigation, but as Dash noted, there are so many people who have come forward in other places that four other states were involved in that aforementioned memo.
So how much could this negatively affect the NFL?
“It doesn’t look good from a PR perspective, but this is not a criminal case, so a lot of this could be handled administratively by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or in a civil suit, depending on whether any claims are brought under federal or state laws,” Dash said. “Some of the remedies really depend on what laws are invoked, but it could be anything from forcing the NFL to stop certain behavior to re-hiring certain people or pay back wages to those who lost opportunities to discrimination.”
And as for the NFL’s response that “we are trying to eliminate this” and its possible use as a defense?
“I don’t know their motivation or what they’re actually enforcing, but the execution is key here, not the formality or façade,” Dash said. “There’s a lot of rhetoric after what happened with Ray Rice and the NFL had to take a stand against domestic violence, and they have been called hypocritical for discipline since then, but I’d say that the feeling from people filing complaints and initiating lawsuits are that these policies are smoke and mirrors, not anything that’s enforced – and in practice, which is what’s important here, there’s a pattern of abusive behavior that goes on within the league offices.”
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