Trying to get the first black woman to serve as this country’s attorney general Jim Trotter’s racial discrimination/retaliation lawsuit against the NFL discharge – 21 months after she was appointed to defend the league against Brian Flores’ class action lawsuit against the NFL’s alleged racist hiring practices.
Loretta Lynch has made it her mission to show America that “Black-on-Black crime” occurs in courtrooms.
Here are some standouts from the filing:
“The NFL denies the Plaintiff’s allegations. The facts will show that there was nothing retaliatory or discriminatory about the decision not to renew the Claimant’s contract. Even on its face, however, the complaint is fatally flawed, and must therefore be dismissed.”
“Plaintiff’s state and city law claims must be dismissed. Plaintiff’s claims under the NYSHRL and NYCHRL must be dismissed for the separate reason that Plaintiff, a California resident working in California, cannot allege the requisite impact in New York City and New York State. (Compl. ¶ 18.) Contaminated allegations of travel to New York for work (id. ¶ 233) are insufficient at the pleading stage. See e.g. Hoffman v. Parade Publs., 15 NY3d 285, 291 (2010).”
“Discovery must be stayed. Because the motion to dismiss is likely to at least limit the Plaintiff’s claims – and the scope of any discovery – the NFL also intends to seek a stay of discovery pending the resolution of its motion.
To clarify, this is a four page document from a Black woman on how the case should be dismissed, preventing things from coming out in discovery because the Black man who is a league with a racist past — the same league led by a commissioner who once Colin Kaepernick publicly apologized for his racist views — didn’t do a good enough job, to her of all people, of proving racism.
Crazy, right?
In September, Trotter filed his 53-page lawsuit nearly six months after the award-winning veteran NFL reporter’s contract with NFL Media was not renewed after he has constantly questioned Goodell about a lack of diversity throughout the league and in its newsroom. Jogging in public pressed Goodell at the last two Super Bowl press conferences on the issue and each time Goodell only had excuses, not answers. The lawsuit reads like a peek behind the curtain of how the league “deals” with black people.
“If Blacks feel one way or another, they should buy their own team and hire who they want to hire,” is what Trotter claims in his lawsuit over what Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said in 2020 about why so few Black employees work at the highest levels for the league and NFL teams.
“A black female diplomat told colleagues that Mr. In response to scheduling events during Black History Month, Johnson asked if he was going to speak to an audience that was ‘just a bunch of black people’ and told her that she was ‘marginalizing’ herself.’ Mr. Johnson also “questioned why the Black community celebrates Black History Month” and argued that the “real challenge” was that Black fathers did not stay with their families. is what Trotter also claims about New York Jets owner Woody Johnson.
“If the Black players don’t like it here, they should go back to Africa and see how bad it is,” is also an allegation in Trotter’s lawsuit about what Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula once said. The lawsuit also describes Pegula as once saying that the NFL “needed to have a face, as an African-American, at least a face that could be in the media, we could get behind it,” as a way around the league’s “media problem” regarding Kaepernick.
All of this is just what’s in Trotter’s case, we haven’t even gotten to Flores’s yet.
Despite keeping his job status active after being fired as head coach of the Miami Dolphins and filing his lawsuit, Flores’ case is headed to trial, despite how many times the league and Lynch tried to stop it. And for a league that only has two more permanent head coaches who identify as Black than it did in 1921the conclusion on how this will play out will be fascinating.
The NFL knows they are in over their heads when it comes to Flores’ case. That’s why the league and Lynch are trying so hard to get Trotter’s off their plate. And while the legal system will play a large role in how both of these cases will be remembered, there is one thing that will never be forgotten. The NFL participated in race-norming for years to prevent hundreds of former Black players from receiving compensation from the league, as it is a system that assumes Black people have lower cognitive function. Then they went out and Loretta Lynch hired to defend them against allegations of racism — this is something that Black people must commit to memory.
