Late on Monday night in the Pacific day area, former Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden’s prosecutors filed a complaint with the Supreme Court of Nevada in exchange for what amounts to an “instant record” of his most recent court appearance against the NFL.
Gruden, 60, seeks an en masse revision, which, if granted, would think all seven judges on the Court may examine his situation.
In a lawsuit brought by Gruden against the NFL in 2021, Gruden claimed Roger Goodell or a member of his team intentionally harmed his Raiders work commitment. Gruden accuses Goodell of leaking racist, misogynistic, and homophobic letters Gruden wrote as an ESPN individual ten years ago to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Rudden resigned from the Raiders in embarrassment, leaving behind$ 60 million in lease terms, as well as millions of dollars in testimonials and other discounts.

The NFL firmly refutes Gruden’s claims and contends that he is misdirecting responsible for writing obscene emails that may endanger anyone’s career in any field.
The group also contends that because Gruden consented to Goodell’s work arbitration process, no court may hear the case. Employees or former employees are typically unable to seek judicial evaluation until after mediation is over, and mediation rules are typically binding.
In 2022, a prosecution judge denied the NFL’s motion to dismiss the case to mediation. Clark County ( Nev. ) District Court Judge Nancy Allf objected to the peculiarity of Goodell, a defendant in Gruden’s lawsuit, serving as the arbitrator to determine the merits of Gruden’s allegations against Goodell. Even if Goodell chooses an arbitrator to hear the dispute, there still is a conflict because Goodell would choose ( and presumably pay ) the arbitrator to decide the matter through the NFL. Additionally, Allf ruled that Gruden’s absence from receiving a copy of the league’s constitution, which included the mediation terms that his contract included by reference, was constitutionally significant.
However, Allf had a” determined clear problem” in her choice when Chief Justice Elissa Cadish and Justice Kristina Pickering sided with the NFL in May. Cadish and Pickering emphasized that Gruden had agreed to mediation and that he had also “read and comprehended the NFL Constitution, By-Laws, and appropriate NFL rules and regulations.”
Justice Linda Marie Bell dissented. She said it was “outrageous” that Goodell can be both the accused and arbiter. She also described the capacity of the NFL to arbitrarily change the arbitration section, “at any occasion without notice”, as reflecting an “extreme amount of substantial unconscionability”.
Ordinarily, en bank reconsideration requests are rejected. Under state rules, reconsiderations are” no popular” and “ordinarily will not be ordered” except in two conditions: to maintain uniformity of decisions or to address” a large precedential, legal or people policy issue”. Any two justices can” compel” the court to grant a petition, though such a granting does n’t guarantee there would be another hearing—the case could be disposed of by written order instead.

Gruden hopes other justices will interpret the situation differently from Bell and not Cadish and Pickering.
To that end, Gruden’s attorneys raise three core arguments in their brief.
First, they contend that Goodell allegedly lied to the NFL that the underlying dispute” conducts inadvertently to the best interests of the League or professional football.” This is important, Gruden’s attorneys assert, because application of the arbitration clause in the league constitution requires the commissioner to make such a finding. Due to the fact that they concluded that the emails becoming public or the potential role of leaks were sufficient to support a finding conduct detrimental, Cadish and Pickering made a different argument.
Second, Gruden’s attorneys contend that the NFL should n’t be able to enforce an arbitration clause because Gruden was n’t under a contract with the NFL and his employer was the Raiders rather than the league itself. They contend that California’s applicable law “bars non-parties from compelling arbitration except in limited and limited circumstances.”
Third, Gruden’s attorneys insist enforcement of arbitration constitutes “procedural unconscionability”, meaning “oppression or surprise” and when a person “has no meaningful choice” regarding a contractual term. Gorden claims he was unable to “negotiate any aspect” of the league’s constitution, including a “buried within a separate 448-page document that was not provided to Gruden.”
The brief attempts to frame the conflict as one that affects regular Americans, whether they are employees or bosses, moving beyond the famous and atypical circumstance of a former NFL head coach suing the commissioner over the release of bigoted emails.
The brief claims that” this case presents extraordinarily important issues and merits en banc reconsideration because, if left in place, the Order will allow employers and other parties to freely impose unreasonable and oppressive terms without any of the procedural and substantive safeguards that have been carefully established.”
Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores has also witnessed the NFL limit his employment-based lawsuit despite being in a different court ( a federal court in the Southern District of New York ) and having a different set of circumstances ( a coach who claims he was the victim of race discrimination ). Flores is currently appealing to the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Extracts from the court filing have been added to this story.