*The racial discrimination lawsuit against Fox News’ longtime comptroller, Judy Slater, is about to expand by seven.
According to New York Magazine, seven black Fox News employees plan to join the suit filed last month by colleagues Tichaona Brown, Tabrese Wright and Monica Douglas, who claim Slater subjected members of Fox’s payroll staff to racial insults for years. As previously reported, Fox News fired Slater in February shortly after the lawsuit was filed.
New allegations have come to light in this new filing, including Slater forcing black female employees to arm wrestle white female employees in her office:
Via New York Magazine:
Lawyers representing the payroll employees are demanding that Fox’s accounting director, Tammy Efinger, also be removed from supervising an employee because she allegedly participated in Slater’s racist behavior. In a letter to the network’s lawyers obtained by New York, the attorneys state: “Not once did Ms. Efinger step in or attempt to interfere with Ms. Slater’s outrageous conduct.” The letter adds, instead, “Ms. Efinger chose to laugh or giggle following Ms. Slater’s vitriol.”
The letter also includes new allegations of racism in Fox News’ accounting department. According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Slater demanded that black female employees hold “arm wrestling matches’” with white female employees in her office, just down the hall from Ailes’s office on the second floor of Fox headquarters. “Forcing a black woman employee to ‘fight’ for the amusement and pleasure of her white superiors is horrifying. This highly offensive and humiliating act is reminiscent of Jim Crow era battle royals,” the letter says, referring to the practice of paying black men to fight blindfolded at carnivals for white spectators’ entertainment. The lawyers argue that Efinger bragged about wanting to “fight” a black employee.
The new claims, if true, reveal not just the failures of the legal and HR departments to deal with problematic managers but also just how deep the culture of discrimination and harassment may have run during Ailes’s reign.
Reached for comment, an attorney representing the employees, Jeanne Christensen, said, “There will be more complaints forthcoming in the next few days.”
A Fox News spokesperson said: “We can’t comment on a lawsuit that we haven’t seen yet.”
Watch the original litigants in an interview with “Good Morning America” below:
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