Robin DeLorenzo, one of the first three women to work full-time as an on-field NFL official, has filed a lawsuit against the league and two officials, saying that she faced gender discrimination, retaliation and harassment while in her role from 2022 to 2025, when the league fired her.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks reinstatement along with unspecified damages. An NFL spokesperson on Tuesday called the lawsuit “baseless.”
DeLorenzo began her career at the high school level, later officiating college football before the NFL hired her in 2022. In the complaint, she describes an environment that “fixated on her gender from day one,” and a league that “views female officials as novelties to be controlled, disciplined, or pushed out — never as professionals entitled to equal opportunity.”
The league denied DeLorenzo’s claims.
“The NFL is committed to providing a fair and supportive environment for all of its game officials,” the league said in a statement. “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.”
Among the issues raised in the complaint, DeLorenzo said that her supervisor, Walter Anderson, former senior vice president of officiating, told DeLorenzo to make her ponytail show through the hole in the back of her hat, while DeLorenzo preferred to have her hair tucked underneath. Anderson is one of the officials named in the complaint.
“The comments were making her so uncomfortable she considered cutting off her hair,” the complaint says.
DeLorenzo also said that she frequently received men’s clothing that was too large for her, forcing her to purchase her own shorts and iron on the NFL patches herself. She said she never received undergarments that fit, and worked games without weather-resistant shirts or jackets that fit.
“At times, the weather was simply unbearable but she worked through it nonetheless,” the complaint says.
DeLorenzo said she was subject to “humiliation,” including being made to sing in front of the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp as a “rookie” official, something the complaint said coaches often have rookie players do during camps. DeLorenzo said Anderson recorded part of her performance despite her asking him not to.
In her first season, DeLorenzo was assigned to official John Hussey’s crew. She said in the lawsuit that he would use profanities in telling her to stop talking, and that Hussey would not speak with her by the end of the season.
During her time working for the NFL, the complaint said, DeLorenzo was asked to attend a college football refereeing clinic, even though it was “a low-level college clinic, involving different rules, different mechanics, and different philosophies as compared to the NFL,” calling the experience “humiliating.” According to the complaint, the clinic was run by Anderson and Byron Boston, the other official named in the lawsuit. The NFL Referees Association filed a grievance on DeLorenzo’s behalf over the clinic, with the league ultimately reimbursing expenses and paying DeLorenzo for attending.
The complaint also said that DeLorenzo received inaccurate grades on calls and that her male counterparts were treated more favorably under the grading system, while she faced “more stringent” standards.
DeLorenzo said she was fired on Feb. 18, 2025.
There were more than 100 NFL game officials in 2025. Sarah Thomas was the league’s first full-time female official when she was hired in 2015, followed by Maia Chaka in 2021 and DeLorenzo a year later.