--- title: Brian Flores' Lawsuit Shows the Limits of the Rooney Rule description: Former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores' discrimination lawsuit shows the limits of diversity initiatives like the Rooney Rule. canonical: https://time.com/6145755/brian-flores-lawsuit-rooney-rule-diversity/ author: Pamela Newkirk article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-02-07T18:09:21.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:45.572Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Brian Flores' Lawsuit Shows the Limits of Diversity Initiatives og:description: Efforts like the Rooney Rule only work with accountability and oversight og:url: https://time.com/6145755/brian-flores-lawsuit-rooney-rule-diversity/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt559e33b6182e0489/698a223322fb85a255e2d19d/Brian-Flores.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: NFL: JAN 09 Patriots at Dolphins og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Brian Flores' Lawsuit Shows the Limits of Diversity Initiatives twitter:description: Efforts like the Rooney Rule only work with accountability and oversight twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt559e33b6182e0489/698a223322fb85a255e2d19d/Brian-Flores.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Brian Flores' Lawsuit Shows the Limits of Diversity Initiatives > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=77564a19-a5ab-4537-bcd3-2dffa050c3ae&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/W3Zny2Gh.m3u8) (10:26)  _Published 2021-05-28. It's been 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, when an angry white mob destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa Oklahoma. But Tulsa's story is part of a larger history of Black Wall Streets that existed in many American cities._ by [Pamela Newkirk](https://time.com/author/pamela-newkirk/) ## Pamela Newkirk Feb 7, 2022 6:09 PM UTC  Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores during the game between the New England Patriots and the Miami Dolphins in Miami Gardens, Fl. on on Jan. 9, 2022. Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores during the game between the New England Patriots and the Miami Dolphins in Miami Gardens, Fl. on on Jan. 9, 2022. David Rosenblum—Icon Sportswire/Getty Images by [Pamela Newkirk](https://time.com/author/pamela-newkirk/) ## Pamela Newkirk Feb 7, 2022 6:09 PM UTC While mountains of studies and the paucity of African Americans in most professions have long signaled the prevalence of hiring discrimination, the insidiousness of the practice typically makes it difficult to prove. It’s why the recent [lawsuit filed by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores](https://www.wigdorlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Complaint-against-National-Football-League-et-al-Filed.pdf)–who alleges the New York Giants and the Denver Broncos conducted what he calls “sham interviews” as an act of diversity window dressing–resonates for many African Americans. The teams have denied the allegations. What is playing out with Flores is not just a story about football. It’s a story about the American workplace. Research shows that Black candidates are on average [less likely to be hired than even less qualified white ones](https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/27/white-high-school-drop-outs-are-as-likely-to-land-jobs-as-black-college-students/?sh=11ced9117b8f). Studies have also found that [white men with recent criminal records](http://www.dmiblog.com/archives/2007/09/white%5Fconvicts%5Fas%5Flikely%5Fto%5Fbe.html) are far more likely to receive callbacks than Black men with no record and that Black college graduates are [two times as likely to be unemployed](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/african-americans-with-college-degrees-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-unemployed-as-other-graduates/430971/) as other graduates. **_Read More:_**[_Diversity Has Become a Booming Business. So Where Are the Results?_](https://time.com/5696943/diversity-business/) So Flores may be a casualty of the same deep-seated attitudes that made the NFL’s [Rooney Rule](https://operations.nfl.com/inside-football-ops/diversity-inclusion/the-rooney-rule/) necessary to begin with. The rule, which requires teams to include minority candidates in interviews for leadership positions, was adopted in 2003 after a study commissioned by civil rights attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran found that Black NFL coaches were more likely to be fired, and less likely to be hired, than white coaches. The study revealed that Black head coaches won more games per season than white head coaches. They also led their teams to the playoffs 67% of the time, compared to 39% for white coaches. The numbers were particularly glaring in a league in which nearly 70% of the players were Black but Black candidates were rarely hired as head coaches or general managers or for other front-office positions. While the league was founded in 1920, it only hired its first Black head coach in 1989 and its first Black general manager in 2002. Mehri and Cochran’s findings mirror those in other influential fields–from corporate America to art museums, academia, fashion, and Hollywood–where Black people remain disproportionately underrepresented, most notably at the top. Over the past few years a number of companies, including Amazon, Facebook, and Uber, have adopted their own versions of the Rooney Rule, but even with these policies in place, progress has been slow. In 2018, for example, Amazon had no people of color on its 10-member board. It[ adopted the Rooney Rule](https://www.vox.com/2018/5/14/17353626/amazon-rooney-rule-board-diversity-reversal-shareholder-proposal)**,** but at the end of last year, it still had just one Black board member. In its 2021 workforce data, it reported that just[ 3.8% of its senior leadership was Black](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/our-workforce-data). The same year, at Facebook,[ Black people made up 2.9% of leadership](https://about.fb.com/news/2021/07/facebook-diversity-report-2021/), held 2.1% of tech positions and were 4.4% of the overall workforce. After it adopted the Rooney Rule, Uber added an African American woman to its board, but according to [its 2021 diversity report,](https://www.uber.com/us/en/about/diversity/) leadership was just 3.8% Black and there were no Black people working in tech leadership positions. So while the Rooney Rule may increase the number of candidates of color who are interviewed, Black people remain acutely underrepresented in most fields. Since the NFL adopted the rule, the number of Black coaches in a single season [hit a high of eight](https://www.phillytrib.com/sports/nfl-goes-for-tie-with-8-black-head-coaches), and is back down to one, which is what the number was in 2002 when Mehri and Cochran first decided to highlight the evident disparities. **_Read More:_**[_TIME 100: Colin Kaepernick, by Jim Harbaugh_](https://time.com/collection/2017-time-100/4736257/colin-kaepernick/) This is not to say change isn’t possible. While representing Black plaintiffs in a [landmark discrimination lawsuit against Coca-Cola](https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/17/business/coca-cola-settles-racial-bias-case.html) in 1999, Mehri had found similar instances of inequality. Employment data showed that Black employees at the company made up only 1.5% of senior management and that just one had risen to senior vice president in the company’s 113-year history. It also found that Black employees made less than white employees in the same position. With the benefit of court oversight and intentional leadership, the company, over a five-year period, dramatically increased the number of African Americans in senior management even if, in recent years, [there have been signs of rescission](https://www.wsj.com/articles/coke-resets-goal-of-boosting-black-employees-after-20-year-effort-loses-ground-11608139999#:~:text=Coke's%20diversity%20push%20started%20as,African%2DAmericans%20at%20the%20company.). While the percentage of Black executives increased from 1.5% in 1998 to 15% by 2010, by 2020–two decades after the company reached a $192 million settlement with the plaintiffs–that [percentage had dropped to 8%.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/coke-resets-goal-of-boosting-black-employees-after-20-year-effort-loses-ground-11608139999) And the overall number of Black employees was 15%, a full 5% lower than what it was in 2000. Just as organizations can swing open the doors of opportunity to groups of people who have routinely been shut out, without vigilance they can just as easily retreat to well-worn patterns that research shows reflect a bias toward the familiar. Any diversity initiative–whether the Rooney Rule or the hiring of diversity professionals–is only as good as an institution’s actual commitment to racial equality. If it is only concerned with checking boxes, it will never achieve the diversity the rule intends to foster. --- ### More from TIME --- **_Read More:_**[_Is It Unethical to Watch Football With Your Kids?_](https://time.com/5770136/football-dangers-children/) Mehri told me last week that the Rooney Rule can work only if there’s oversight and accountability. He applauds the league for enforcing the rule in 2003 when it levied a [$200,000 fine against Detroit Lions’ president and CEO Matt Millen](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/2003/07/26/lions-millen-is-fined-200000/28c20bfc-b3c4-4cf1-8d1e-28c29147dd8b/) for hiring a white coach without interviewing any candidates of color. But he believes the league made a grave error in 2018 when it said [the Oakland Raiders complied with the rule](https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/%5F/id/22154540/nfl-says-oakland-raiders-complied-rooney-rule-hiring-jon-gruden-head-coach), despite accusations that sham interviews were conducted with minority candidates after the decision to hire [Jon Gruden](https://time.com/6106344/jon-gruden-emails-nfl-bigotry/) to a 10-year $100 million contract was already made. “We saw it at the time and pleaded with them to say that they crossed the line and they couldn’t get themselves to do it,” Mehri says. “That one non-action sent a powerful message that you can just go through the motions.” The league denied the allegations then and now and insists that [“diversity is core to everything we do.”](https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/02/01/nfl-claims-diversity-is-core-to-everything-we-do-says-brian-flores-claims-are-without-merit/) But the numbers suggest otherwise. Whether Flores can prove racial discrimination in court remains to be seen, but neither denials nor toothless diversity initiatives can overshadow the stark reality of yawning racial disparities in the league, and in much of America. ## Transcript The legacies of black wall Street's, it's important for people to remember because there were so many people who have no idea that there were vital Dynamic places where African Americans were living out their vision of the American dream opportunity in Hope and progress of for their community. June 1st 2021 Marcel hundred years since the Tulsa Race Massacre, as many as 300, people were killed as an angry white mob, destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa. Oklahoma once known as that City's Black Wall Street story is part of a larger history of segregated prosperity in many American cities around the turn of the century. So ask Jim Crow begins to really take shape and African-Americans are forced into segregated parts of the city. These communities rise up in places like Durham North Carolina and Little Rock Arkansas, Jackson, Mississippi, and people began to notice that up there all kinds of businesses and services that grow there. And so they kind of take on the name Black Wall Street. One of the biggest and longest lasting black wall. Street's was in Richmond. Virginia. A neighborhood called Jackson Ward. So the factors that led to Richmond's being the cradle of black capitalism, lay in the diverse slave economy, that existed at that time. So you had African American who were involved and not just agricultural slavery but also an urban and Industrial slavery end after the Civil War II. Had this concentrated community of African Americans who have been working in the city in factories and it feels and rural areas around Richmond has continued to build the institutions and the community and the neighborhood that they had begun even before the war. And then you begin to have a lot of really important, but natural first, such as insurance companies and Banks, which really highlight Richmond as the first Black Wall Street. One of the most storied figures in Jackson Ward history was a banker and business woman named Maggie Lena Walker. You cannot study magazine Walker and not be fascinated you do with her, she was born in slaved in 1864 on, right? Towards the end of the Civil War, and really saw economic empowerment of African American women as the path forward Locker started, her banking career at a mutual Aid Society, called The Independent order of St, Luke 1867 St. Luke was established to help freed slaves. Gain economic independence in 1901 and she said, I'm specifically talking to the women here. Look, good women here. Whose money is in this organization and she was able to bring that Vision to fruition in 1903. When she became the first black woman Bank president. St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. Later named the Consolidated Bank and Trust was acquired in 2005, but Walker's home in Jackson. Ward is still standing. As you see around me, the homes have been restored on the outside while mrs. Walker's home. It's been restored to its full Glory as much as we could using artifacts that belong to Maggie Walker and her family, because we still get a lot of people who come in and do our chores, and they are still amazing. Why didn't I know about her before? Why have I not heard the story? And it is a story that has been preserved quite fully in Richmond itself, but not so much across the country. What is happening now in Jacksonville? Or is that those who remember, the stories are coming together to make sure that they are no longer for God neighborhood? We not look as it did when she walks these streets, but the memories are still there. In his Heyday, I imagine that it was a fabulous to live and Jackson board that you needed. You could get your in Jackson Ward, and I will just say walking into the st. Luke Bank on, I think had to be a treat. First of all, making me walk or made sure that he was beautifully appointed with mahogany and marble and I can just imagine a made of domestic. I'm working in a white person's home in another part of the city and she walks into the bank. And she's greeted probably didn't, but by not just her first name, but she's call miss or missus, and I just can't imagine that it is height Jackson, Ward was an incredible experience, but then there's also the dark side and that is that it is a segregated community. Magalina Walker accommodate segregation by real ending mostly in the segregated areas. Are so there I think in the midst of this in affluent and its dynamism. There's always that dark cloud of racism in Jim Crow that kind of just outside there is a a world that wants to continue to treat them as second-class Citizens. Jackson word with a Haven for black business for many years but like Tulsa was Black Wall Street. It to you came to an end, the difference between the end of Jackson, Ward, and the end of Tulsa, is really a difference in degree. And so for Jackson, Ward, it was more of a slow death. A wide range of factors caused Jackson Ward's, economic decline, including redlining, which kept Capital out of black neighborhoods, slum clearance, where City's raise old buildings without rebuilding in certain areas and a highway system that cut right through the neighborhood. But the final end to Jackson Ward's. Black Wall Street days, came on the heels of the civil rights movement and desegregation. So ironically at the very time that you begin to have opportunity at least legally for African Americans to have equal accommodation, to be able to get you no equal access to education is at the same time that these communities have been so undermined in the decades previous and so when they have choices to make, they in a move to the suburbs and the Really the most vulnerable and needy living in places like Jackson Ward. The occurrence of diminishing. Black wealth has a long history in our country. I mean really takes root in slavery. There you have hundreds and hundreds of years of unpaid black labor, and then be disenfranchised and their wealthy undermined and other ways. I think that we just really have to deal with this long-standing American exploitation of African Americans. You can go to your bank tomorrow and you can say until you as a corporation start to speak on our behalf. I want all my money in recent years, there has been a movement to reinvest funds into black Banks and businesses. One of the organizations advocating for this financial shift is Bank Black USA which helps people find and invest in Black banks for people to move their money from the larger institutions that had it. Maybe a history of discriminatory practices and predatory lending practices and move that money to in the eyes with their minority depository Institution. According to the FDIC mdi's are more likely to lend to lower and moderate-income communities and help promote economic viability in these areas, found out that black financial institutions are under supported in under capitalize, right? Black banks are in Decline. For example, there was like, Fifty of these institutions in 2001 and 2021 and very nearly 20, our solution was to create resources for people to be able to compare the banks and services, and financial help the community impact it. Because we do believe that these empty eyes. Can you play an integral role in closing that racial wealth Gap with the support? It if you don't learn about the origin and history of Blackwell, you'll fall into the Trap of thinking that there was no, Blackwell. The time to learn about Jackson would take time to learn about Durham a time to learn about Tulsa. Let's ring the stories for word, and remember those times of black Excellence, it can come again, if we follow the road now cuz they said before us, ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6145755/brian-flores-lawsuit-rooney-rule-diversity/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6145755/brian-flores-lawsuit-rooney-rule-diversity/"},"headline":"Brian Flores' Lawsuit Shows the Limits of Diversity Initiatives","datePublished":"2022-02-07T18:09:21.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:51:45.572Z","description":"Former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores' discrimination lawsuit shows the limits of diversity initiatives like the Rooney Rule.","url":"https://time.com/6145755/brian-flores-lawsuit-rooney-rule-diversity/","keywords":["Race","freelance","nationpod"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt559e33b6182e0489/698a223322fb85a255e2d19d/Brian-Flores.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Pamela Newkirk","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/pamela-newkirk/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt559e33b6182e0489/698a223322fb85a255e2d19d/Brian-Flores.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"NFL: JAN 09 Patriots at Dolphins","caption":"NFL: JAN 09 Patriots at Dolphins","creditText":"David Rosenblum—Icon Sportswire/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/race/","name":"Race"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6145755/brian-flores-lawsuit-rooney-rule-diversity/","name":"Brian Flores' Lawsuit Shows the Limits of Diversity Initiatives"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets","description":"It's been 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, when an angry white mob destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa Oklahoma. 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