Colleen Dominguez, a correspondent for Fox Sports, is suing cable channel FS1 for age discrimination. Dominguez, 54, said she received only “3-4 assignments” in all of 2015.
Dominguez claims FS1 prefers younger women or older men. In a lawsuit first obtained by Deadspin, Dominguez says she “learned from other employees that management was concerned with how she ‘looked’ on camera.”
The lawsuit alleges that Dominguez received a text message from a “longtime Fox producer” that stated:
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 allegedly told by a supervisor “we [Fox] don’t handle veteran female reporters very well.”
Dominguez allegedly secured interviews with sports stars including Madison Bumgarner and Rory McElroy, but the network declined the interviews because they would “muddy the waters” for other FS1 reporters.
Holly Sonders
The lawsuit specifically mentions Holly Sonders as an example of a “subtantially younger” and less experienced reporter who has been receiving assignments that Dominguez expected.
Dominguez allegedly met with Fox president Eric Shanks in January 2015 to discuss her lack of assignments. The suit claims that Shanks said, “You should be on TV. Let me look into it.”
According to the lawsuit, Dominguez never heard back from Shanks or anyone else in management after the meeting.
The network’s response was allegedly to inform colleagues of Dominquez that she was “no longer employed” at FS1. The network declined to comment when we reached out.
Dominguez, who still has “Fox Sports reporter” listed in her Twitter bio, is a veteran TV news and sports reporter with stops at NBC News, MSNBC, and ESPN. The lawsuit mentions several career highlights, including coverage of the death of Princess Diana, the aftermath of September 11, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and the massacre at Columbine high school.