Flores fight enters arbitration fight’s aftermath

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to accept the NFL’s last-ditch attempt to force all or part of the Brian Flores case into arbitration, meaning discovery will begin in earnest. The process could become combative for the league and the teams involved, while Bria

The moment the Supreme Court declined to accept the NFL’s last-ditch effort to force all or part of the Brian Flores case into arbitration, the litigation clock started moving for real.

Now the case will finally get going—and the pace of what comes next is unlikely to be gentle. In employment litigation, no company that has been accused of wrongful termination typically admits it. And the witnesses often lock into their stories long before anyone swears an oath to tell the truth. the whole truth. and nothing but the truth.

That creates a familiar grind: if the plaintiff is fired for violating a workplace rule. lawyers look for whether others violated the same rule without facing consequences. It’s the kind of painstaking. circumstantial evidence work that’s designed to collide with predictable denials of discrimination and retaliation.

In the Flores case, that collision is expected to land during depositions. Flores’s lawyers are set to aggressively pursue deposition testimony from a wide range of witnesses tied to the league office and the teams that have been sued so far: the Dolphins. Broncos. Giants. Texans. Cardinals. and Titans.

A key pressure point is who gets questioned. The Commissioner and any owners are among the witnesses whose default posture is described as “we didn’t do anything wrong.” The description that follows is blunt: many of those witnesses are likely to emerge from depositions feeling frustrated. and in some cases flat-out pissed off after being verbally poked and pressed to go beyond that default line.

For Flores—along with the other plaintiffs, Steve Wilks and Ray Horton—the experience is expected to be similar. The litigation strategy on the other side is to look for anything that can make the plaintiffs look bad. The goal is to dig and dig and dig some more. to make the process as uncomfortable as possible. to throw mud at the wall. and to throw mud directly at the plaintiffs.

That includes searching for potential misstatements, whether big or small, that could later be characterized at trial as lies. And because discovery depositions happen without a jury present. the lawyers can push harder than they might if jurors were watching—without worrying as much about alienating the people who will ultimately decide the case.

The resulting picture is tense on both sides. In the unofficial “playbook” described here for defending corporate clients against claims of illegal employment practices. the defense tries to turn the tables on the plaintiff—aiming to make the plaintiff look as bad as possible when it’s time to present the case to a jury.

The discovery process, then, takes on a different feel. The legal equivalent of a street fight is how it’s framed—messy. ugly. and potentially damaging for everyone caught in it. That includes the league and its teams. but also Flores. Wilks. and Horton. who are preparing for depositions where the pressure can feel personal.

As snippets of deposition testimony come to light, the impact could ripple quickly. And for the parties involved, the end of the arbitration attempt means one thing: the fight now moves into the phase where every word, every inconsistency, and every attempt to explain—or contradict—could matter.

Brian Flores NFL Supreme Court arbitration discovery process depositions Dolphins Broncos Giants Texans Cardinals Titans Steve Wilks Ray Horton