Brian Flores, other minority coaches to have case against NFL tried in open court

Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores’ racial discrimination case against the NFL will be tried in its entirety in open court after an updated ruling by a federal court judge Friday, Feb. 13.

Originally filed by Flores in 2023, the case has been stayed throughout a lengthy appeals process after an initial ruling by Judge Valerie Caproni compelled arbitration on some claims while denying it for others.

The stay is now lifted, and litigation in the case will proceed for all claims rather than going through the NFL’s arbitration process.

“The court’s decision recognizes that an arbitration forum in which the defendant’s own chief executive gets to decide the case would strip employees of their rights under the law,” wrote Flores’ lawyers Douglas H. Wigdor and David E. Gottlieb in a statement received by the Minnesota Star Tribune. “It is long overdue for the NFL to recognize this and finally provide a fair, neutral and transparent forum for these issues to be addressed.”

The NFL had not yet responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

In her opinion on Friday, Caproni wrote the NFL’s “unilateral control” over its dispute resolution process is a “fatal flaw.”

An appellate court ruling in August 2025 declared the league’s arbitration rules violate the Federal Arbitration Act. That ruling caused attorneys to request reconsideration of Caproni’s initial ruling to send some of the lawsuit into arbitration.

Former head coaches Steve Wilks and Ray Horton are fellow plaintiffs in Flores’ case.

Claims against the league and all teams named, including the Dolphins, will be litigated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

A pretrial conference is set for 9 a.m. CT on April 3 at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse in New York.

An arbitrator determined the NFL Players Association violated its collective bargaining agreement with the NFL by distributing annual “team report cards” and ordered the union to stop making public any future reports. The NFL informed teams of the decision on Friday.

“We are pleased with the decision from the arbitrator, upholding the parties’ collective bargaining agreement and prohibiting the NFLPA from disparaging our clubs and individuals through ‘report cards’ allegedly based on data and methodologies that it has steadfastly refused to disclose,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement.

In a memo sent to the 32 teams, NFL attorneys said the NFLPA’s witness and counsel at a hearing characterized the report cards as “union speech” and admitted that: the union “cherry-picked” topics and player responses to include or not in the report cards; players had no role in drafting the commentary; the union selected which anonymous player quotes to include or exclude and the union determined the weight to give each topic and the resulting impact on the alphabetical grades.

The union later issued a statement saying its efforts aren’t going away and that it will continue to ensure players are being heard.

“The ruling upholds our right to survey players and share the results with players and clubs,” the union said in its statement. “While we strongly disagree with the restriction on making those results public, that limitation does not stop the program or its impact. Players will continue to receive the results, and teams will continue to hear directly from their locker rooms.”