Fox Sports 1 personality Colleen Dominguez is accusing her employer of age discrimination, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
The suit, which lists Dominguez’s age as 54, claims that when the correspondent was hired on March 1, 2014, Fox Sports 1 described her as a “key personality” in the agreement, and expected her to play a major role in its coverage. Despite that sentiment, the complaint said, Dominguez’s assignments quickly diminished. Dominguez claimed that she started working on getting interviews for her own benefit, because Fox Sports 1 wouldn’t give her anything.
At least one of Dominguez’s coworkers was aware that the company treated older women poorly:
Dominguez learned from other employees that management was concerned with how she “looked” on camera. One longtime FOX producer sent Dominguez a text message stating “you haven’t done anything wrong at all. Just because 5 men at a company want to be gratified by 24 year old women doesn’t make you bad at your job.” Dominguez was also told by a supervisor that “we [FOX] don’t handle veteran female reporters very well.”
Dominguez also claimed that she emailed Fox Sports president Eric Shanks in January and asked for more assignments. Shanks said he would look into it, but Dominguez said she never heard back.
One interesting, if second-hand, claim:
Dominguez has also been told that FOX management instructed a FOX producer to cut video of Dominguez’s face and body for a management meeting and that this request has never been made for any other employee.
Dominguez is suing for an unspecified amount for damages. We reached out to Fox Sports for comment, and will update if we get a response.
Update (Dec. 18, 9:42 a.m.): A spokesperson for Fox Sports declined to comment.
The entire lawsuit can be found below.
Image via YouTube
Contact the author at samer@deadspin.com.