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Robin DeLorenzo was one of the first three women to officiate an NFL game. Now she’s suing the league, claiming her three years on the field turned into what she describes as a nightmare of sexism and unequal treatment.

The lawsuit was filed Friday in Manhattan federal court. It’s asking for her job back and unspecified damages.

DeLorenzo worked as a league official from 2022 to 2025. According to the filing, she faced gender-based scrutiny, humiliation and open hostility during that time.

The NFL isn’t backing down. Brian McCarthy, a league spokesperson, said in an email that DeLorenzo was terminated after three seasons of documented underperformance.

The allegations in this lawsuit are baseless, and we will vigorously defend against them in court.

The NFL Referees Association didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Back in 2023, DeLorenzo told NFL.com about the emotional moment when she got the call. The league’s senior vice president of officiating let her father deliver the news that she’d made it to the NFL.

Once he gave me the news, my dad and I just stared at each other crying for about five minutes. It was the most magical night.

She’d worked her way up through high school and college officiating at her father’s urging. The longtime New Jersey resident had reached the pinnacle of her profession.

But according to the lawsuit, things went south quickly.

The league sent her man-sized clothing to wear. Officials told her to let her ponytail show through the hole in the back of her hat – apparently to make it clear a woman was on the field. The lawsuit says repeated references to her hair eventually made her want to cut it off.

During training camp one day, an NFL officials crew chief told then-Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin that DeLorenzo should be made to sing in front of everyone, like rookie football players do, because she was a new official.

She ended up performing what the lawsuit calls an “utterly humiliating singing performance” in front of the Steelers’ players, all the men on her officiating crew, and her boss. According to the filing, he’d promised not to record her but did anyway.

The lawsuit claims that in the following weeks, she was repeatedly shamed, harassed and subjected to profanity-laced trash talk by her crew chief – a man who’d recently been accused of mistreating another female employee. By the end of the season, he wouldn’t even speak to her.

Things didn’t improve in 2024. DeLorenzo was forced to attend what the lawsuit calls “an alleged training opportunity” over her union’s objection. It was designed for lower-level college officials learning the trade.

No male official had ever been required to do this.

It was a male power play that served its purpose of humiliating the plaintiff, shattering her confidence, and significantly hindering her NFL career.

The NFL fired DeLorenzo on Feb. 18, 2025.

The lawsuit paints a picture of systemic problems. It says she worked her way through two decades of officiating – breaking barriers, making history, and outperforming expectations at every level – only to be met with hostility, retaliation and systemic inequality the moment she stepped into a league that claims to champion opportunities for women.

Instead of supporting one of the only women on its officiating staff, the filing argues, the NFL exposed her to unchecked harassment. She was denied the resources given to men, according to the lawsuit. Her training and grading opportunities were manipulated, and her career ultimately ended based on what she calls tainted evaluations created by the very people who discriminated against her.

The harm to her career is irreversible, the lawsuit says; the emotional and reputational damage is immense.

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