A former NFL referee, one of the first three women to officiate in the league, has filed a lawsuit alleging a pattern of gender-based discrimination, harassment, and wrongful termination during her tenure. The suit details incidents of humiliation, unequal treatment, and systemic hostility, painting a picture of a workplace environment that was not supportive of female officials. The plaintiff seeks reinstatement and damages.
In a new lawsuit, one of the first three women to referee an NFL game describes her three years at the pinnacle of her profession as a descent into the clutches of a sexist institution incapable of treating a woman as an equal. Robin DeLorenzo cited gender-based scrutiny, humiliation, and open hostility among the indignities she suffered from 2022 to 2025 as a league referee. The lawsuit, filed Friday in a federal court in Manhattan, requested her reinstatement along with unspecified damages.
Messages seeking comment from the NFL and the NFL Referees Association were not immediately returned.\In a 2023 interview with NFL.com, DeLorenzo described the emotion she felt advancing, at the insistence of her father, through the ranks of officiating at the high school and college levels until the NFL’s senior vice president of officiating allowed her father to give her the news that she had been promoted to the NFL. “Once he gave me the news, my dad and I just stared at each other and cried for about five minutes,” she told NFL.com. “It was the most magical night.” The lawsuit, however, suggested that the magic quickly ended when the longtime New Jersey resident showed up for work after being sent men's-sized clothing to wear and being instructed to let her ponytail stick out of the hole in the back of her cap, seemingly to make it clear there was a woman on the field. She noted that repeated references to her hair ultimately made her want to cut it off. The lawsuit contended that the NFL crew chief one day during training camp told then-Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin that they should make her sing in front of everyone, like rookies, because she was a new official. As a result, she claimed, “she performed an absolutely humiliating singing performance” in front of the Steelers players, all the men in her officiating crew and her boss, who, she said, had promised not to record her but did so anyway, according to the lawsuit. In the following weeks, she was repeatedly shamed and harassed and was subjected to insults and taunts laced with obscenities by her crew chief, a man who had recently been accused of mistreating another employee, the lawsuit indicated. By the end of the season, the crew chief would not even speak to her, it added.\In 2024, DeLorenzo was forced to attend “an alleged training opportunity,” over the objection of her union, that was directed at lower-level college officials learning the craft — something that, the lawsuit said, no male referee had ever been required to do. “It was a demonstration of male power that served its purpose of humiliating the plaintiff, breaking her confidence and significantly hindering her career in the NFL,” the lawsuit stated. DeLorenzo was fired on February 18, 2025. “She worked her way through two decades of officiating — breaking barriers, making history and exceeding expectations at every level — only to encounter hostility, retaliation and systemic inequality the moment she entered a league that claims to promote opportunities for women,” the lawsuit stated. “Rather than support one of the few women in their officiating corps, the NFL exposed her to uncontrolled harassment, denied her resources given to men, manipulated her training and evaluation opportunities, and ultimately ended her career based on tainted assessments created by the very people who discriminated against her,” it added. The lawsuit claimed that the damage to her career was irreversible and the emotional and reputational harm was immense
NFL Lawsuit Sexism Referee Discrimination
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