For 23 years, the NFL's Rooney Rule has required teams to interview at least two external minority candidates for head coach, general manager, and coordinator positions. It does not impose hiring quotas. It does not require teams to hire anyone based on race. It requires, at minimum, that qualified minority candidates be seen.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has called this policy "blatant race and sex discrimination" and issued an investigative subpoena demanding years of NFL hiring records, with the stated goal of forcing the league to abandon the rule entirely.

The NFL has been clear about what the rule actually does: "The Rooney Rule does not impose any hiring quotas or mandates, and it does not license clubs to consider race or sex in making hiring decisions. Hiring decisions for NFL teams are made by the individual clubs — not the League — and those decisions are based on merit."

Despite two decades of the Rooney Rule, the gap between the number of Black players in the NFL and the number of Black head coaches remains significant. The rule has not gone far enough. And now political pressure from a state attorney general is pushing it backward.

A state AG using subpoena power to dictate hiring policy to a private organization sets a precedent that extends far beyond football. If Florida can compel the NFL to abandon a voluntary interview practice, no private employer's diversity efforts are safe from government interference.

We are calling on the NFL to resist Florida's legal pressure, maintain and strengthen its commitments to minority hiring, and reject the premise that ensuring qualified candidates are interviewed constitutes discrimination.

The Rooney Rule is not a quota. It is an opportunity. Defend it.