NYT: Agreement reached to scrap race as a factor in NFL concussion settlements
Within the 46-page doc, the NFL and different events stated, “No Race Norms or Race Demographic Estimates — whether or not Black or White — shall be used within the Settlement Program going ahead” and no social gathering is allowed to enchantment the claims primarily based on the benefit of race or the usage of race norms.
The Occasions report additionally stated an skilled panel will arrange new norms that shall be relevant to “all future neuropsychological checks beneath this system, all claims that haven’t but been dominated on, and all claims which might be at the moment on enchantment wherein race norms or race demographic estimates could also be at difficulty.”
“We look ahead to the Court docket’s immediate approval of the settlement, which offers for a race-neutral analysis course of that can guarantee diagnostic accuracy and equity within the Concussion Settlement,” Brad Karp, a lawyer for the NFL, stated in an announcement to the Occasions.
The league agreed to pay $765 million, with out admitting fault, to fund medical exams and compensate gamers for concussion-related well being points, amongst different issues.
In response to courtroom paperwork, former gamers being evaluated for neurocognitive impairment had been assumed to have began with worse cognitive perform in the event that they had been Black. So if a Black participant and a White participant acquired the very same scores on a battery of considering and reminiscence checks, the Black participant would seem to have suffered much less impairment. And due to this fact, the lawsuit acknowledged, can be much less more likely to qualify for a payout.
CNN has reached out to Christopher Seeger, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, and the NFL, however has not but acquired responses.