Discovery in Jon Gruden’s lawsuit against the NFL is not getting a timeout. Clark County District Court Judge Joe Hardy on Thursday refused to pause the discovery phase, ordering document requests and depositions to start rolling in Gruden’s case over who leaked emails that led to his 2021 resignation. The decision keeps the long-running dispute in public court instead of letting it drift toward private arbitration, and it sends both legal teams straight into evidence-gathering that could reshape how the scandal is understood.
As reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Hardy denied the league’s anti-SLAPP motion, calling it “without merit” and a “tactical misuse” of the statute. He declined to put discovery on hold while the NFL pursues appeals and instead instructed both sides to move ahead under standard discovery rules. The ruling followed oral argument in a Clark County courtroom on Thursday.
“We appreciate the court’s decision and its clear direction to move the case forward,” Gruden attorney Adam Hosmer-Henner said in an email. He also told the court the NFL defendants “have felt things are not going well for a while now,” according to coverage by KTNV. Gruden’s side has argued that only full discovery can reveal whether league officials or others intentionally disclosed his emails, which the lawsuit says triggered his forced resignation. With discovery now ordered, the focus shifts from procedural fencing to document review and depositions.
The NFL has countered in court filings that Commissioner Roger Goodell did not provide Gruden’s emails to the media and that Gruden’s claims rest on news reports rather than admissible evidence, the league argued in an anti-SLAPP filing quoted by KTNV. League attorneys had asked Hardy to pause discovery while higher courts weigh in. He rejected that request, which keeps the case on a public schedule instead of in private arbitration or on indefinite hold.
What discovery could reveal
Discovery could show who had access to the roughly 650,000 emails the NFL collected during its workplace investigation into the Washington franchise and whether the league played any role in the disclosures. Those questions sit at the center of Gruden’s complaint. He sued the NFL and Goodell in November 2021, alleging a “malicious and orchestrated campaign” to destroy his career by leaking old emails, according to The Washington Post. The Nevada Supreme Court has already allowed the case to stay in public court instead of private arbitration, which opened the door to public discovery.
Anti-SLAPP context
Nevada’s anti-SLAPP statute lets defendants seek early dismissal when they argue claims target protected speech and can sometimes lead to a temporary halt on discovery. Courts analyze these motions by asking whether the conduct is protected and whether the plaintiff has a probability of winning, as summarized in Nevada precedent on FindLaw. The law is meant to weed out weak suits that chill free expression, although judges also weigh a plaintiff’s need to obtain evidence. That tension helps explain why the NFL pursued the anti-SLAPP strategy.
What’s next
Judge Hardy indicated that discovery could last about 12 months and that a trial might run roughly four weeks, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. If that schedule holds, the case will grind through months of document productions, depositions and likely fights over privilege before any trial date is pinned down. Both sides should expect to be back in Hardy’s courtroom frequently as discovery disputes bubble up.
