NFL Concussion Settlement: Race-Norming, Fraud, and Your Claim

A settlement meant to compensate former players for concealed brain-injury risks ended up running into two of its own, entirely separate integrity problems: a testing formula that made it statistically harder for Black retirees to qualify, and a scheme that got tens of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims approved before anyone caught it. Both are now part of the same fund’s history, and both matter to how a legitimate claim actually gets evaluated today.

Quick answer: The NFL concussion settlement is an uncapped, 65-year fund compensating former players for six qualifying diagnoses — CTE (only for pre-2014 deaths), ALS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and two levels of dementia — with awards up to $5 million. From the settlement’s early years until 2021, its testing formula used “race-norming,” assuming Black retirees started with lower baseline cognitive function, making it harder for them to qualify; a 2020 discrimination complaint led the NFL to discontinue the practice and, with court approval in October 2021, allow retroactive rescoring for affected claims. Separately, in 2026, the settlement’s oversight process found five law firms had steered clients toward doctors who approved $95 million in questionable Parkinson’s diagnoses before an audit caught it. More than $800 million has been approved overall, and — unlike most mass settlements on this site — new claims can still be filed today.

What the Settlement Actually Covers

The settlement, arising from In re: National Football League Players’ Concussion Injury Litigation before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, resolved claims that the NFL concealed what it knew about football’s long-term neurological risks. Unlike a fixed-pool mass tort settlement, this fund is uncapped and runs for 65 years from its 2017 effective date — every claim that qualifies gets paid according to the award grid, regardless of how many total claims come in.

Six diagnoses qualify for a monetary award under the settlement’s grid:

• Death with CTE — but only where death occurred before July 7, 2014, since chronic traumatic encephalopathy can currently only be definitively diagnosed after death, and the settlement doesn’t compensate a living CTE diagnosis at all
• ALS
• Parkinson’s disease
• Alzheimer’s disease
• Level 2 Neurocognitive Impairment (moderate dementia)
• Level 1.5 Neurocognitive Impairment (early dementia)

Awards range up to $5 million depending on the specific diagnosis, and are adjusted downward based on the retiree’s age at diagnosis and other factors the settlement’s own grid specifies.

Race-Norming: A Testing Formula That Built In Bias

For the settlement’s early years, the neuropsychological testing used to evaluate dementia claims applied “race-norming” — a scoring adjustment that assumed Black retirees started with a lower baseline level of cognitive function than white retirees. The practical effect was structural: a Black retiree and a white retiree with the same raw test score could receive different qualifying outcomes, because the Black retiree’s result was measured against an assumed lower starting point, making it harder to show the decline the settlement’s criteria required.

In 2020, former players Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry filed a discrimination complaint over the practice. The NFL announced it would discontinue race-norming on June 2, 2021, and in October 2021, the NFL and players’ counsel reached a formal agreement — approved by the presiding judge — to eliminate the practice going forward and to allow Black retirees whose claims had been affected to have their tests rescored, or retested, under race-neutral criteria. The fix was estimated to add over $100 million to the settlement’s total payouts as previously denied or under-scored claims were reevaluated.

It’s worth being precise about what the fix does and doesn’t guarantee: rescoring removes the race-based adjustment from the calculation — it doesn’t waive any other qualifying requirement. A rescored result can newly clear the diagnostic threshold, but the claim still goes through the settlement’s ordinary review process, and it’s still possible, after rescoring, for a claim not to qualify.

Why Dementia Claims Are the Hardest to Get Approved

Independent of the race-norming issue, Level 1.5 and Level 2 neurocognitive impairment claims have proven to be the most difficult category in the entire settlement to get approved. Investigative reporting has found these dementia-related claims make up the large majority of claims submitted, but have historically cleared approval at a markedly lower rate than more objectively documented diagnoses like ALS. This reflects a genuine, ongoing clinical and administrative tension — dementia diagnosis criteria require more subjective clinical judgment than a diagnosis like ALS — that predates race-norming and continues to affect claimants of every background, even after that specific bias was corrected.

A Separate Scandal: Fraud, Not Discrimination

In 2026, the settlement’s own claims oversight process identified a scheme running in the opposite direction from the race-norming problem: five law firms had allegedly steered clients toward doctors willing to diagnose Parkinson’s disease regardless of whether the retiree actually showed symptoms consistent with it. Of 98 former players represented or connected to those firms who sought Parkinson’s awards, 57 claims — worth more than $95 million — had already been approved before an audit and reporting of suspicious activity caught the pattern. The firms involved were barred from further work in the settlement.

This doesn’t implicate legitimate claimants, but it has real practical consequences for anyone filing now: expect closer scrutiny of the underlying medical evidence supporting a diagnosis, particularly for the diagnoses that have drawn this kind of attention.

What’s Actually Been Paid, and What’s Left

More than $800 million in claims had been approved as of recent public reporting, against a fund structured around a total potential payment pool that court estimates have put above $1.6 billion — though because the fund is uncapped and continues accepting new claims, any specific total figure, including these, is a snapshot rather than a fixed, final number. Confirming the current, official figures directly against the settlement’s own reporting, rather than a single article’s numbers, is worth doing before drawing any conclusion about how much remains available.

Not the Same as Your NFL Disability or Pension Claim

This litigation settlement is entirely separate from the NFL Player Benefits Office and the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Plan, which administer disability and pension benefits under their own, unrelated eligibility rules. Pursuing or receiving one does not automatically affect the other, but each requires its own separate application, and assuming one process covers what the other does is a common and costly assumption to make without checking.

Evidence That Matters

• A qualifying diagnosis from an independent, properly credentialed physician, following the settlement’s own required testing protocol
• Complete neuropsychological testing records, particularly relevant if a rescoring request under the race-neutral criteria may apply to your situation
• Documentation of your playing history and any prior concussion-related medical treatment
• Records of any prior claim submission, denial, or deficiency notice from the settlement’s claims administrator
• Independent verification of the treating or evaluating physician’s credentials and methodology, given the heightened scrutiny following the 2026 fraud findings

Practical Steps

1. Confirm whether you qualify for retroactive rescoring if you are a Black retiree whose dementia-related claim was previously denied or scored under the old testing methodology.
2. Don’t assume a rescoring request alone guarantees payment — it removes one specific bias from the calculation, not every other qualifying requirement.
3. Use only physicians and evaluators who meet the settlement’s own required qualifications, especially given the heightened post-2026 scrutiny of certain diagnoses.
4. Confirm your claim’s current status directly with the settlement’s claims administrator, rather than relying on any general reporting about total amounts paid or approval rates.
5. File as soon as you have a qualifying diagnosis rather than waiting, even though the fund technically remains open for years to come — earlier filing generally means faster resolution.
6. Separately pursue any NFL disability or pension benefit application you may be entitled to, since it runs on an entirely different process from this settlement.
7. Consult an attorney experienced specifically with this settlement, given how much its claims-administration history — rescoring, fraud scrutiny, dementia-approval patterns — differs from an ordinary personal injury claim.

Sources & Further Reading

• U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania — docket for In re: National Football League Players’ Concussion Injury Litigation, before Judge Anita B. Brody
• NFL and NFL Players Association joint statement and court filings (June and October 2021) on discontinuing race-norming and implementing retroactive rescoring for affected claimants
• Reporting and settlement oversight findings (2026) on law firms barred from the settlement following fraudulent Parkinson’s disease claim referrals
• BrownGreer PLC — the settlement’s independent claims administrator, for official claim status and current aggregate payout reporting
• See our guide to traumatic brain injury settlement value for how a concussion-related injury is generally valued outside this specific settlement, and filing a claim in a class action or mass tort settlement for the general claims-administration process this settlement’s grid and deficiency procedures follow