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I was born ready.

Welcome to the advisory opinions podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isker and it's fitting Sarah in a way that in between the AFC and NFC championship games and before the Super Bowl.

We're going to have primarily a football themed legal podcast for a really, really good reason.

And we're also listeners. I'm I've asked I've surrendered. It is now risen to the level where the name he who shall not be named shall be named Madison Caughthorn.

We're going to talk about it in the context of interaction and a political article that was made some suggestions about how the 2024 election goes that well, I'll just let Sarah say what her piece about that when the time comes.

And but it is going to be an example of how analysis constitutional analysis that you sometimes read and don't take all constitutional analysis is equally valid.

Just shall we say that.

All right, let's let's just talk about the NFL and here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about a lawsuit as filed by Brian Flores, former coach of the Miami dolphins against the National Football League and the Giants and the dolphins and the Broncos and, quote,

John Doe teams one through 29. In other words, he's basically suing all 32 teams in the NFL. It's a class action complaint seeking a jury trial.

And and basically what he's alleging in this complaint is that he there has been a system that he individually has been discriminated against on the basis of his race in his career opportunities in the NFL.

That his prior employer, the Miami dolphins and its owner engaged in practices that would have direct implications for the competitive integrity of the league.

And then an essence that if you're a white coach that you've got a lot of chances if you're a black coach in the NFL, you don't have many chances at all and that that this is a 70% black league.

And I'm just going to run through some of the statistics that he shares in the lawsuit one out of 32 teams, 3% employees of black head coach, four out of 32 teams, 12% employ a black offensive crate coordinator.

11 out of 32 employ a black defensive coordinator only eight of the 32 teams employ a black special teams coordinator only three of the 32 employ a black quarterback coach and six employ a black general manager.

And again, this is coming from a potential talent pool that is 70% black players.

So I have kind of thought about this complaint in three kind of broad categories, Sarah, anecdotes, statistics and story.

And when you combine these three things together, I think what you have is the complaint is painted a picture of how elite spaces remain predominantly and some in certain areas like coaching, etc.

The head coach is almost exclusively white without justification long after the formal legal barriers or the formal policy barriers or the quite explicit discrimination has faded.

And I don't know where exactly we should start here, but I guess I'd want to ask you, what about this complaint stood out to you the most?

So, as you mentioned, there's like individual discrimination where you need to show that, you know, but for your race, you would have gotten the job or the promotion, you have to show that through evidence of things that were said or implied or whatever else and also that, you know, a white person got the job.

You know, those cases are hard because you need to prove stuff that is like basically in people's heads.

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