NY1 Anchors Settle Suit for Gender and Age Discrimination

Five of NY1’s anchor women will be leaving the network after settling a lawsuit they filed alleging age and gender discrimination. The suit was brought forward by Roma Torre, Kristen Shaughnessy, Jeanine Ramirez, Vivian Lee and Amanda Farinacci against NY1’s parent company Charter Communications in June of 2019.  On December 31, 2020 the Plaintiffs attorneys issued a statement announcing that they had reached a confidential resolution of the suit and would be “parting ways” with NY1. 

NY1 was acquired by Charter Communications in 2016, who subsequently began to revamp the network. The suit claimed the alleged discrimination was a direct result of this revamp. Prior to the acquisition, the five plaintiffs had regularly appeared on air, with Roma Torre specifically known as a network mainstay. However, they alleged that Charter’s efforts to revamp and modernize NY1 resulted in the plaintiffs’(whose ages range from 40 to 61) roles on air being drastically reduced in favor of elevating younger and less experienced talent to more prominent positions. This included an overhaul of NY1’s weekly schedule, which the suit alleged was intended to put “younger women and men in front of the camera at the expense of… older female talent”. 

The suit also alleged that NY1 paid male anchors more than women. Roma Torre, who had worked at NY1 for 25 years claimed her salary was half that of her co-anchor Pat Kiernan. Furthermore, the suit claimed that the plaintiffs’ efforts to issue complaints to management and human resources resulted in “retaliation and further mistreatment”. In essence the suit alleged that Charter had created a culture of discrimination against older female reporters at NY1 which stonewalled the plaintiff’s opportunity for career advancement. 

Prior to announcement of  settlement the focus of the case seemed to be on the alleged wage discrimination by NY1. In an effort to prove the disparate pay between Torre and Kiernan the plaintiffs subpoenaed Kiernans’ agent Adam Leibener. The subpoena demanded Leibener provide the salary and contracts for Pat Kieran as well as two other NY1 anchors, Annika Pergament and Jamie Stelter. Kieran, Pergament and Stelter were not parties to the suit and subsequently filed a motion to block the request. In a December 23 ruling US District Judge Jesse Furman quashed the subpoena, calling it “problematic” and stating that the plaintiffs should have sought the materials from Charter. This ruling was a major blow to the plaintiffs efforts to prove wage discrimination, and was filed just 8 days before the settlement was announced.