The National Football League vowed on Wednesday to stop using “race-norming” to settle brain injury lawsuits, a practice critics argue disproportionately targeted black football players.
The “race-norming” protocol employed by the NFL assumed black players started out with lower cognitive functioning than nonblack players, thus making it more difficult for those injured players to prove damages qualifying them for financial awards from the league, according to the Associated Press.
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“The replacement norms will be applied prospectively and retrospectively for those players who otherwise would have qualified for an award but for the application of race-based norms,” the NFL said in a statement obtained by the outlet.
THE NFL RACIALIZED HIRING AND GOT MORE RACISM
The NFL’s statement reportedly noted a panel of neuropsychologists formed to propose a new testing regime to the court includes two female and three black doctors.
After the March dismissal of a civil rights lawsuit over the practice against the NFL filed by former Pittsburgh Steelers players Kevin Henry and Najeh Davenport, both of whom are black, the federal judge overseeing the case then asked for a report on the issue.
“Words are cheap. Let’s see what they do,” former Washington running back Ken Jenkins, who was not personally injured but whose wife led the petition drive on behalf of NFL friends struggling with cognitive problems, said of the league.
Henry and Davenport, who argued in their lawsuit they were denied awards they would have received had they been white, appealed U.S. District Judge Anita Brody’s ruling.
Christopher Seeger, a lawyer who negotiated Henry’s and Davenport’s settlement with the NFL, said earlier this year that he had not seen any evidence of racial bias in the administration of the settlement fund, but he later amended his statement and apologized.
“I was wrong. I didn’t have a full appreciation of the scope of the problem,” Seeger told ABC News. “You think you know everything. Sometimes, you don’t. But the closer I looked, the more I realized that this had to go.”
The attorney added that he’s “sorry that anybody, any client of mine in this program has been made to feel that way.”
“That is a big mistake. It was a failure of the system. I’m a part of that,” Seeger, who is still locked in confidential negotiations with the NFL, added. “But I’m also a part of getting it fixed.”
Jenkins said the litigation “never would have come to be” if not for the NFL players’ wives, who were “infuriated by all the red tape involved” in trying to collect their husbands’ financial awards.
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More than 2,000 NFL retirees have filed dementia claims, but fewer than 600 have received awards, according to the most recently available data. The awards averaged $516,000 for 379 players with early-stage dementia and $715,000 for the 207 players suffering from moderate dementia.
Representatives for the NFL did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
