State Sen. Aaron Rouse is suing the NFL in pursuit of disability payments linked to injuries sustained during his three-year career as a safety.
Rouse, a Virginia Beach Democrat, is suing after initially applying to access disability benefits from the NFL in March 2021. Former players can access disability payments with the majority vote of a six-person board within the organization that hears players’ petitions. NFL teams pay into the plan.
The board denied Rouse’s application in 2021, his lawyers said, and then his subsequent appeal in 2022.
In those two applications, doctors for Rouse testified that he’d been “totally impaired” due to multiple concussions.
Aaron Rouse
Rouse claims the NFL failed in reviewing his case and that he was wrongly denied benefits. His complaint also describes the composition of the NFL’s board as having an “inherent structural conflict of interest” because three voting members on the NFL’s Disability Board are appointed by member clubs within the league.
Rouse’s lawyer, Charlene Morring, declined to comment. A spokesperson for the NFL did not immediately return a request for comment. An investigation by The Washington Post in 2023 found that the NFL vigorously fights applications from former players who allege injuries sustained while playing in the league.
Rouse starred at Virginia Beach’s First Colonial High School before playing for four years at Virginia Tech. He was selected in the third round of the 2007 NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers, with whom he played for two years. Rouse, who also spent time with the New York Giants, entered politics in 2018 — winning a seat on the Virginia Beach City Council. He then flipped the state senate seat vacated by Republican Jen Kiggans when she was elected to the U.S. House.
According to doctors quoted in the complaint, Rouse suffered “severe and debilitating conditions” as a result of his time in the NFL. The disabilities include neurological impairments resulting from multiple concussions, cognitive impairments affecting his mental functioning, and psychiatric conditions that further limit his functional capacity, his complaint states.
The complaint says the NFL’s Disability Board found that Rouse did not meet the threshold, which requires a former player to be found “totally and permanently disabled” by a neutral physician.
As part of his appeal of that denial, Rouse was analyzed by more specialists. One Hampton Roads neuropsychologist, Dr. Felix Kirven, found that Rouse would be considered “totally impaired due to his multiple concussions” under modern standards. Two other doctors, Scott Sautter and Alan Wagner, diagnosed mild cognitive impairments and second-order effects from Rouse’s multiple concussions.
“The medical evidence from treating physicians, including Dr. Felix Kirven, Dr. Scott Sautter, and Dr. Alan Wagner, supported Rouse’s claim that he is totally and permanently disabled due to the cumulative effects of multiple concussions and other injuries sustained during his NFL career,” the complaint reads.
Rouse currently chairs the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee. He’s also the chief patron of high-profile legislation regulating cannabis and so-called “skill games,” the slot-machine-like gambling kiosks that proliferated in convenience stores and gas stations across the commonwealth until a court ruling found them to be illegal.
Rouse’s complaint seeks a court order requiring the NFL to pay his disability benefits with interest.