The Brian Flores lawsuit continues to be caught at square one of the litigation process, with the question of whether he’ll be required to submit all of his claims to arbitration still not resolved.
Currently, a federal appeals court is taking up an NFL challenge to a lower-court decision that allowed Flores to keep multiple aspects of his case in court, specifically as to claims against the Giants, Broncos, Texans, and the NFL. (Flores’s claims against the Dolphins have been sent to arbitration; he is not yet able to appeal that ruling.) The paperwork submitted by the NFL flagged a new issue that was, to say the least, surprising.
After the Dolphins fired Flores in early 2022, he landed as an assistant coach with the Steelers. The move raised eyebrows; with Flores suing the NFL and, ultimately, four different franchises for racial discrimination and (as to the Texans) retaliation, many expected Flores to be shunned from ah industry where a lawsuit against the league and/or specific teams is perceived as an attack on all 32 organizations.
The bad news for Flores came after the fact. The NFL and multiple teams have argued that his contract with the Steelers forces his pre-existing legal claims into arbitration.
That wasn’t supposed to happen, based on the understanding between Flores and the Steelers. As part of the litigation, Flores’s lawyers have submitted a February 19, 2022 email from Steelers G.M. Omar Khan (at the time, he was the V.P. of football and business administration). The Khan email attached a copy of Flores’s contract and included this important message: “This employment agreement is not intended to infringe in any way on the lawsuit filed by Coach Flores in February 2022, which is currently pending. The Club and Coach Flores do not intend for anything in this employment agreement to infringe upon Coach Flores’ right to prosecute the pending lawsuit, and neither does this agreement infringe upon the rights of the NFL or any party to the lawsuit in asserting any defenses in the lawsuit.”
In other words, the Steelers contract was supposed to have no impact, one way or the other, on the “pending lawsuit.” And then the NFL seized on that contract as a potential silver bullet to kill the pending lawsuit, by forcing the remaining claims made in the lawsuit into the secret, rigged kangaroo court.
The Steelers declined comment to PFT on the matter. That said, it’s hard to imagine Khan or head coach Mike Tomlin being anything other than pissed off about the league trying to use a contract that was specifically intended not to become an issue in the lawsuit as a “gotcha” tool.
There’s another strange wrinkle to all of this. The league submitted to the district court a copy of the Steelers-Flores contract that had not been officially approved (as all coaching contracts are) with a signature from Commissioner Roger Goodell. The district court rejected the argument on the basis of the contract not being signed by Goodell. Then, after the NFL suddenly found a copy of the contract with Goodell’s signature on it, the NFL raised the issue again through a motion for reconsideration. The court rejected the request.
As a practical matter, then, the appeals court would first have to conclude that the district court should consider the Steelers-Flores contract argument on the merits. The case would go back to the lower court, which would fully explore whether the Khan email prevents the NFL from using the Steelers-Flores contract as a way to force the rest of the case into arbitration.
Regardless of how it plays out — and it’s possible that the courts will conclude that the Khan email does indeed force the pending claims to arbitration — there’s a basic question of right and wrong at the heart of this. Of trustworthiness versus gamesmanship.
The Steelers hired Flores with a clear statement of no intention to undermine his existing lawsuit. The NFL is now trying to use his contract with the Steelers to undermine his existing lawsuit. While it might be technically legal, it just feels wrong.