NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says the league is cooperating with an investigation launched by James Uthmeier after Florida’s attorney general issued a subpoena targeting the NFL’s Rooney Rule and broader diversity hiring initiatives.

The subpoena, sent to the league on May 13th, is part of an investigation examining whether the NFL’s employment policies violate Florida civil rights law, prompting Goodell, speaking during league meetings in Orlando on Tuesday, to defend the NFL’s policies while simultaneously confirming that the league intends to comply with the inquiry.

“I think we have been very clear about our programmes, and we obviously evaluate them all the time, not just for how they get better, but also to make sure that they’re consistent with the law,” the commissioner said. “We’re engaging with the Florida attorney general and will continue to. We’ll share everything we’re doing with them. We think it’s certainly within the law, but also something very positive.”

The dispute centres primarily around the Rooney Rule, the NFL policy introduced in 2003 and named after late Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney. The current version requires teams to interview at least two external minority candidates for head coach, general manager and coordinator vacancies, while also interviewing at least one minority candidate for quarterbacks coach positions. Uthmeier, however, has repeatedly criticised the policy in recent months, arguing that it amounts to discriminatory hiring practice. In a letter accompanying the subpoena, he described the Rooney Rule as ‘blatant race and sex discrimination’.

The subpoena orders the NFL to appear before the Florida attorney general’s office in Tallahassee on June 12th, and demands extensive documentation from the league, including diversity reports, coaching census data and demographic surveys covering NFL coaching staffs from 2017 onward.

The investigation also extends beyond the Rooney Rule itself to include additional programmes such as the NFL’s ‘accelerator initiative’, launched in 2022 to help minority coaching and front office candidates gain greater exposure to owners and senior executives during hiring cycles. The accelerator programme was resumed this week in Orlando after being paused last year, though the NFL has since revised the structure to include non-minority participants.

Reports from the meetings indicated nearly half of this year’s participants were white men, and Goodell defended the programme’s purpose while attempting to frame it as merit-based rather than quota-driven.

“There are a lot of candidates up there that are diverse, that are getting the opportunity to improve themselves and to get exposure, to get an opportunity,” he said. “So, the people that are up there are the best of the best and they are a very diverse group, but they are the best of the best. And what we’re trying to do here is to make them even better and to give them opportunities. And, from what I heard, one, they appreciate the opportunity; two, it was helpful in that.”

The legal challenge arrives at a sensitive moment for the NFL, meanwhile, as the league has spent years attempting to address criticism surrounding minority hiring opportunities, particularly after former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and several teams in 2022.

New court filings in Flores’ lawsuit revealed his legal team has now served subpoenas on 25 NFL franchises and issued more than 1,000 discovery requests seeking hiring records, internal communications and diversity-related documentation from across the league. Flores, now defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, originally filed suit against the NFL, the Miami Dolphins, the Denver Broncos and the New York Giants in 2022, alleging discriminatory hiring practices and accusing teams of conducting sham interviews with minority candidates to satisfy Rooney Rule requirements.

According to reporting by Daniel Kaplan of Front Office Sports, the latest filings represent one of the most aggressive discovery phases yet in the case as Flores’ legal team seeks league-wide evidence tied to hiring patterns and internal decision-making processes.

While the number of minority head coaches briefly climbed in recent seasons, criticism has continued over the pace of structural change within ownership groups, front offices and senior coaching positions. At the same time, political and legal scrutiny surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has intensified across the United States, with sports leagues, universities and corporations increasingly facing challenges over race-conscious policies.

For the NFL, the investigation creates another potentially complicated balancing act: defending policies the league views as central to broadening opportunity while simultaneously avoiding accusations that those same policies violate anti-discrimination law. For now, though, Goodell has made clear the league intends to contest the criticism directly rather than retreat from the Rooney Rule entirely.