A panel of the Nevada Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in Jon Gruden's lawsuit that accuses the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell of "directly leaking" racist and misogynistic emails in an attempt to harm Gruden's reputation and force him out as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Gruden filed his lawsuit in November 2021, weeks after resigning under pressure when some of his emails from more than a decade earlier were published by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. The emails had surfaced in the league's investigation of then-Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder.
Gruden told ESPN last summer that the league "thought they could cherry-pick emails from years ago, when I wasn't even a coach, and try to end my career." At the time, league spokesman Brian McCarthy told ESPN that "neither the NFL nor the commissioner leaked Coach Gruden's offensive emails."
The NFL has argued for courts to toss out Gruden's claim, saying a clause in his contract with the Raiders required him to file his claim through league arbitration. So far, the trial court judge in Nevada has sided with Gruden and denied the move to arbitration.
In Wednesday's 30-minute hearing before a three-judge panel of the Nevada's Supreme Court, Gruden attorney Adam Hosmer-Henner argued that arbitration, a process that is controlled by the NFL and where any discovery would not be made public, would be unfair to his client because Gruden is no longer a league employee.
"There's not a presumption in favor of arbitration when there is not a valid and enforceable contract," Hosmer-Henner said.
Hosmer-Henner said the NFL is seeking to overturn the lower court's decision "on the basis there was a buried paragraph in a 450-page document that [Gruden] never saw, couldn't negotiate and had no opportunity to modify while the NFL reserved the unilateral ability to change that NFL constitution."
Chief Justice Elissa F. Cadish asked the NFL's lawyer, Kannon Shanmugam: "What about due process? To have a dispute with somebody who is the one deciding the dispute -- seems like there might be a problem."
"In some sense this is a very artificial case," Shanmugam told the judges. "Because but for the fact that for whatever reason the Raiders settled out of this case and paid Coach Gruden an undisclosed sum, this would be a case we would be operating alongside the Raiders."
Shanmugam told Cadish that "there is no meat on the bones of the allegations the commissioner was somehow involved in this conduct" and that any allegations that Goodell might have been involved in the leaks of Gruden's emails are "completely threadbare."
A decision by the court panel is not expected for at least a month.