The NFL is back in court trying a new route to knock out Jon Gruden’s lawsuit, and this time it’s leaning on Nevada’s anti-SLAPP law after losing its bid to send the case to arbitration.
As Eriq Gardner of Puck explained, the league is asking for Gruden’s suit to be dismissed under a statute designed to shut down baseless claims aimed at silencing critics and draining them with legal costs. Nevada’s law protects “[a] person who engages in a good faith communication in furtherance of the right to petition or the right to free speech in direct connection with an issue of public concern.”
That’s the lane the NFL is trying to occupy: arguing that the leak of confidential documents gathered during the Washington franchise investigation was protected speech tied to a matter of public interest.
But the argument runs headfirst into the obvious question at the center of the case. If the league is saying the leaks were an exercise of free speech, how does that square with the claim that the NFL didn’t leak the emails?
Discovery is expected to sort through that, and as the reporting has consistently noted, only a very small group of people had access to the emails Gruden sent while working for ESPN. One of them leaked them.
The league’s anti-SLAPP push is also designed to slow down Gruden’s effort to show that the NFL intentionally interfered with his business relationships, including by forcing him out as Raiders head coach and blocking future opportunities.
Timing sits at the heart of the fight. The NFL knew about the Gruden emails in June of 2021, but the leaks surfaced five weeks into the 2021 season.
If the point was truly public disclosure, the league could have released the information then and given the Raiders time to find a replacement for the full season. It could also have waited until after the season ended.
Instead, the leak hit while the year was underway.
The source material says the leak was first used in an attempt to push Gruden out through the Wall Street Journal. When that didn’t work, the emails were leaked to the New York Times, and Gruden resigned after that.
That sequence matters because the disclosure didn’t just land on Gruden. It forced the Raiders to change coaches in the middle of the season, which the reporting says undercut the integrity of the year and altered competitive balance.
Rich Bisaccia handled the job well after Gruden left, and the Raiders still nearly beat the Bengals in the wild-card round. The Bengals then nearly won the Super Bowl.
But the bigger point, as laid out in the source, is that nobody can know what the Raiders might have done with Gruden still in place.
The trial court judge has already ruled for Gruden, and the NFL is now asking the Nevada Supreme Court to reverse that decision. For the moment, the merits of the case remain stuck in delay.
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