One of the first women to officiate an NFL game is suing the league for gender discrimination, harassment and retaliation more than a year after she was fired.
Robin DeLorenzo filed a lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that claims she was “subjected to gender-based scrutiny, humiliation, disparate training, unequal gear, and open hostility” while employed as an NFL official from April 2022 to February 2025.
“She was denied the support and development routinely afforded to male officials, graded through a system built and controlled by men who had fixated on her gender from day one, and punished when she reported harassment or insisted on being treated with basic respect,” the lawsuit states.
“The NFL had every chance to intervene, to support her, and to apply its policies fairly. Instead, it silenced complaints, rewarded the men who mistreated her, and ultimately terminated her using the very metrics corrupted by that discrimination.”
In a statement emailed to The Times, the NFL denied the allegations.
“The NFL is committed to providing a fair and supportive environment for all of its game officials,” the league said. “Ms. DeLorenzo was terminated following three seasons of documented underperformance. The allegations in this lawsuit are baseless, and we will vigorously defend against them in court.”
Walter Anderson, who was the NFL’s senior vice president of officiating during DeLorenzo’s first two seasons, and former NFL official Byron Boston, whom the lawsuit states had a supervisory role over DeLorenzo during her employment, are named as co-defendants. An NFL spokesperson said Anderson is not commenting on the matter. Attempts by The Times to reach Boston for comment were unsuccessful.
The lawsuit alleges that DeLorenzo was directed to wear her hair in a ponytail that showed through the hole in the back of her hat, “the implication being that this would make her look feminine and/or make her stand out as being a token female on the field.” She ended up wearing her hair in a visible bun as a compromise, the complaint states.
Also, according to the lawsuit, DeLorenzo often had to purchase her own gear and iron the NFL logo onto it because the gear she was issued came only in men’s sizes that were too large for her to wear.
The complaint also states that during the 2024 offseason, DeLorenzo was “forced” to take part in “a low-level college clinic, involving different rules, different mechanics, and different philosophies as compared to the NFL.”
“The Clinic had nothing to do with helping Plaintiff in her NFL career; it was a male power play that served its purpose of humiliating Plaintiff, shattering her confidence, and significantly hindering her NFL career,” the lawsuit states.
The NFL Referees Assn. filed a grievance over the clinic issue, according to the complaint, resulting in the league reimbursing DeLorenzo for her expenses related to the clinic and paying her for her time spent there. The NFLRA did not immediately respond on Wednesday to a request for comment from The Times.
DeLorenzo also has “identified instances of her male counterparts being treated more favorably” in the grading system used to evaluate officials during her third season, the lawsuit states, adding that she believes “her season three grades were going to be used as a pretext for her eventual termination.”
DeLorenzo spent nearly two decades as an official, working her way up through high school and various levels of college football, before becoming only the third woman to officiate NFL games. In addition to unspecified damages, DeLorenzo is seeking to be brought back as an NFL official and compensated for lost earnings.
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