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Photo courtesy of Sports Center.
Summary: A legal analyst who worked at ESPN sued the sports network for sexual harassment and gender discrimination.
A former Big Law associate and television legal analyst is suing ESPN. According to Fox News, attorney Adrienne Lawrence said that the hosts on the sports network created a toxic work environment, full of sexual harassment and discrimination.
In her lawsuit that was filed this weekend, Lawrence said that “ESPN is, and always has been, a company rife with misogyny.” She went on into detail about how male colleagues at ESPN kept “scorecards” about female coworkers that the men wanted to have sex with. She also said that some of the men openly watched porn in the office.
According to the New York Post, Lawrence added that one male colleague asked what singer Rihanna must “taste like” in her presence.
ESPN told Fox News that the company had already investigated Lawrence’s complaint and that their conclusion was the allegations were “without merit.”
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“We conducted a thorough investigation of the claims Adrienne Lawrence surfaced to ESPN and they are entirely without merit,” ESPN said. “Ms. Lawrence was hired into a two-year talent development program and was told that her contract would not be renewed at the conclusion of the training program. At that same time, ESPN also told 100 other talent with substantially more experience, that their contracts would not be renewed. The company will vigorously defend its position and we are confident we will prevail in court.”
The lawsuit was filed on Sunday in Connecticut, and the 85-page complaint listed numerous former and current ESPN male employees as harassers, including “SportsCenter” anchor Jonathan Coachman, Chris Berman, and journalist Bomani Jones.
Lawrence said that while she was employed at ESPN, she complained to human resources about the alleged gross behavior. She said that HR not only ignored her concerns, but that the department also colluded with “SportsCenter” host John Buccigross to “cover up his misconduct” until she was eventually fired in 2017.
Lawrence’s complaint focused the most on Buccigross’s sexual harassment. The George Washington University Law School graduate said that Buccigross sent her unsolicited shirtless photos in 2016 and called her sexist names like dollface and dream girl. ESPN said that the two were friends.
“I considered Adrienne to be a friend,” Buccigross said. “I’m sorry if anything I did or said offended Adrienne. It certainly wasn’t my intent.”
Coachman, who now works at WWE, also has responded to the lawsuit.
“I will address this only once because I am seething today. In 21 years of being a PROFESSIONAL I have never been more offended in my life. In my 9 years I can count on one hand the amount of times I interacted with anyone other than a co-anchor,” Coachman wrote on Twitter.
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