A third black female employee in Fox News’ payroll department has joined a racial discrimination lawsuit filed last week by two of her black colleagues, according to legal documents obtained by TheWrap.
The amended lawsuit, filed against the network and recently axed exec Judy Slater on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court, alleges a broad pattern of top-down racial harassment that they claim the company tolerated for years.
Among the allegations: Slater told the third employee, credit collections manager Monica Douglas, that she had “black eyes” as opposed to the “Aryan race,” and expressed “an unwillingness to even be near black people.”
As TheWrap exclusively reported last month, Fox News fired longtime comptroller Slater last month after an internal investigation concluded she had engaged in a pattern of racist comments and behavior.
Douglas also accuses Slater of mocking her for the “size of a breast that as removed as part of her cancer treatment.” Douglas says Slater called her “boobs girl” or the “one-boomed girl.”
Fox News issued the following statement to TheWrap: “We take complaints of this nature very seriously and took prompt and effective remedial action in terminating Judy Slater before Ms. Brown, Ms. Wright and Ms. Douglas sued in court and even before Ms. Wright and Ms. Douglas complained through their lawyer. There is no place for conduct like this at Fox News, which is why Ms. Slater was fired.”
The amended version of the lawsuit also includes Fox News executive Dianne Brandi, who, according to the suit, once said that Slater would not be fired because she “knows too much” about improper behavior at the network.
Slater, who is white and worked at Fox for 19 years, was accused of asking one black employee if all three of her children were fathered by the same man, according to an individual familiar with the matter.
In another incident, she responded to a good-night message from two black employees who stopped by her office by raising her hands in a “Hands up, don’t shoot” gesture, a slogan associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, the source said.
Once employees came forward with complaints, Fox News Executive Vice President of Human Resources Kevin Lord led an investigation that resulted in Slater’s termination.
The employees came forward with their complaints after the network started company-mandated sensitivity training in the wake of last summer’s very public ouster of Fox News founder and CEO Roger Ailes over accusations of sexual harassment by anchor Gretchen Carlson and other female employees.