NFL pledges to keep ‘Rooney Rule’ despite Florida’s warning
TALLAHASSEE, Florida — The National Football League won’t stop enforcing its “Rooney Rule” in the face of Florida’s threats of possible legal action over the longstanding diversity hiring practice, league Commissioner Roger Goodell said Tuesday. Speaking at the NFL’s annual meeting in Phoenix, Goodell said the league will “engage” with Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who last week warned the Rooney Rule and other similar hiring policies are “illegal” under Florida’s civil rights laws. But Goodell maintained the NFL believes its rule is “consistent” with state laws and will continue to be used to help “bring in the best talent.
” “One thing that doesn’t change is for our values, and we believe that diversity has been a benefit to the National Football League,” Goodell told reporters Tuesday . The NFL’s stance supporting the Rooney Rule, expressed this week by Goodell and other key leaders — namely Pittsburgh Steelers team President Art Rooney II — could put the league on a collision course with Florida and its Republican leaders. Last week, Uthmeier pressed the NFL to confirm by May 1 that it would stop enforcing its policies requiring teams to interview minority candidates, including women, or else the state could take “civil rights enforcement action.
” Rooney, a powerful figure in the NFL, told reporters Tuesday that while league owners did discuss the letter from Uthmeier, they were not planning to make any moves in response. The NFL, however, is expected to have “some discussion with the attorney general down there just to make sure he understands what exactly we do,” said Rooney , the son of late Steelers chairman Dan Rooney, the rule’s namesake. “I don’t anticipate any dramatic changes to the Rooney Rule,” Rooney told local media Tuesday in Phoenix, as reported by Sports Illustrated .
“We always are looking at our employment policy. Every year we do an analysis of what we’re doing and what we can do to improve the situation. But I don’t expect any major changes.
” Those comments coincide with Goodell’s message. The commissioner, though, did acknowledge the NFL will continue to evolve and change the rule, as the league has done in the past. Created in 2003 by the NFL’s Workplace Diversity Committee, the Rooney Rule as it exists today requires every team to interview at least two external minority candidates for open head coach, coordinator and general manager jobs.