08-28-2025
Brian Flores filed a lawsuit against the NFL and various teams for racial discrimination several years ago. The NFL is an unincorporated membership association of 32 football clubs. Its Commissioner interprets and establishes legal policy and procedures, hires legal counsel, and has the “full, complete, and final jurisdiction and authority to arbitrate” disputes, including employment issues with individual clubs. The NFL and relevant football teams moved to compel arbitration in Flores’s case. Flores had signed employment agreements with each team that include arbitration clauses. There was also a general arbitration provision within the NFL Constitution.
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals considered the arbitration issue. The court concluded that Flores’s agreement to submit his claims to the unilateral and procedural discretion of the NFL Commissioner, a principal executive of a named party (the NFL), created an arbitration “in name only” and lacked the protection of the Federal Arbitration Act. These agreements failed to guarantee that Flores would be able to “vindicate [his] statutory cause of action” in an “arbitral forum.” The one-sided control held by the Commissioner undermined the fairness required for a valid arbitration agreement. Flores would have to submit his disputes to the authority of the principal executive of an adverse party without any provision for hearing by an independent forum. The NFL’s arbitration provision was “fundamentally unlike any traditional arbitration provision protected by the FAA.” The arbitration provision essentially denied Flores “arbitration in any meaningful sense of the word, rendering the agreement unenforceable.”
As a result of this decision, Flores can continue pursuing his race discrimination claims against the NFL and member teams in federal court. This decision highlights the importance of an arbitration provision that provides a neutral arbitration forum with an objective decision-maker for all involved parties.