Long-time Disney executive files sexual discrimination lawsuit on the first day of Pride month
Aux Features Disney
Happy Pride month to Disney! The celebration got started this year with a sexual orientation discrimination lawsuit, filed by VP Production Finance at ABC Signature Joel Hopkins, on the very first day of Pride.
The case seeks compensatory damages, punitive damages, and various lawsuit costs. Hopkins says he has repeatedly been denied promotions—which he believes was due to his sexual orientation. Hopkins began his career at Disney in 1994, as Director of Production Finance for Buena Vista Television. Over the next six years he was promoted twice, once to Vice President of Production Finance for Touchstone Television and then again to his current position. However, after his final promotion, Hopkins’ sexuality as a gay man became known to Jim Hedges, the CFO of ABC and Hopkins’ direct supervisor. That’s when he says the promotions stalled and his career was placed on a road to nowhere.
In addition to the lack of promotion and of equal pay as compared his counterparts, Hopkins says news of his sexuality led to over-scrutiny and harassment at work, creating a hostile environment. He also claims he was excluded from executive meetings and his office space was repeatedly downsized, leading to a reduction in his authority.
“Plaintiff has direct and repeated complaints to HR about the discrimination he has endured while employed by Defendants and, concomitantly, the related failures to promote him and to pay him at the same level as other department heads,” says attorneys for Hopkins in the claim filed at the Los Angeles Superior Court.
“After his sexual orientation became known to his superiors and after being discriminated against and put on a dead-end career track and repeatedly denied promotions with no remedy or relief from HR, Plaintiff is informed and believes that yet again, in or around April 2021, several promotions occurred, but Plaintiff once again was not promoted,” continues the 10-page filing. “Plaintiff is informed and believes that these promotions occurred despite representations that Disney was hurting financially and not promoting.”
While the timing of the case could not be better, it did not come out of the blue. Hopkins filed a complaint of discrimination with California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing earlier this year. Hopkins’ complaint was closed April 30 as he and his lawyers received a Right To Sue notice from the state agency.
21 Comments
Maybe this could finally push them to treat representation as more than acting like a kid who’s been dared to touch a dead bug.
They checked with china but were told no.
In Communist China, MOUSE mad about YOU!
Pretty much, as Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch tweeted:
What are you talking about? Disney’s had more first openly gay characters than any other studio in history!
Disney: Gay people, come spend money at our parks, we love you!(just don’t work for us, because, ew, teh ghey!)
Plenty of LG people work there (can’t speak for the BT part). While there may well be discrimination at the executive levels (which is almost always Male, Pale, and Stale) there really isn’t any at the regular employee level.
Yeah, I think arguments like this are a misdirect from what’s going on. As far as these big corporations go (and admittedly, that’s a low bar), Disney has always been near the forefront in terms of partner benefits and other gay benefits.
It sounds like the discrimination happened with his immediate supervisor; not on a company-wide level. But still, that discrimination shouldn’t exist, and to have been there since 94 (not sure when he was last promoted) and seeing others advance is really disheartening and insulting. To your point, and Disney’s defense, my brother in law is openly gay and works there at a moderately high position.
“there really isn’t any [discrimination] at the regular employee level.”I somehow doubt that immensely
I can understand Disney not having much in the way of gay representation in their films and TV shows for fear of alienating certain markets, but how does not promoting a gay executive help the bottom line? Sometimes big businesses are savagely rational, and sometimes they make no sense at all.
probably easier to not allow gay people into your meetings when you have those discussions about how much representation is too much, so they can be as frank and asshole-ry as they want.
I honestly think we overrate how much businesses are actually able to focus on the bottom line vs being made up of individuals who are easily able to rationalize their prejudices as being good for the business.
Goofy always seemed a little gay to me.
I dunno; there’s something very hetero about his style of incompetence, which mainly involves taking up equipment-heavy hobbies and causing massive amounts of property damage due to overconfidence. Maybe Pluto, a dog just like Goofy who gets treated as a second-class citizen simply because Mickey thinks “certain dogs should sleep outside instead of wearing clothes and driving cars,” better represents the struggle?
That’s more of an evolution thing. Like in the Sonic comics, certain animals were evolved to be Mobians (human like animals) and others were evolved to be Mobini (animal like animals)
This can’t be true, they have a commercial that shows two guys holding hands for a split second in the background! They love LGBTQ folks!
Should he have waited ‘til the last day?
Great, two days into pride and the biggest stories I’ve seen have been about politicians and lawsuits used to make statements during it. I hope by next year we can just omit the parades and festivals and make the event 100% about rich guys in suits.
The AV Club spent the first day of Pride Month going after LGBTQ icon Morrissey
HR is never your friend. Corporate, especially Disney has the tools necessary to cast stones in their reinforced glass houses.