Public Justice Files Amicus Brief in Support of Plaintiff in ‘Hamby v. Women’s National Basketball Association’
Public Justice, a national non-profit legal advocacy organization, has filed an amicus brief supporting Los Angeles Sparks player Dearica Hamby in her suit against the WNBA. The lawsuit alleges her former team, the Las Vegas Aces, illegally traded Ms. Hamby to the Sparks because she was pregnant, and that the WNBA retaliated against her for speaking up about the discrimination. Ms. Hamby has sued the Aces and the league in Nevada under federal and state employment laws, and both defendants have asked the court to dismiss her lawsuit. Public Justice’s amicus brief, joined by A Better Balance and the National Employment Law Project, addresses the WNBA’s defense that it was not, by its telling, Ms. Hamby’s employer, and so she cannot bring employment claims against it.
Public Justice’s brief explains that, under the relevant legal test, the WNBA was Ms. Hamby’s employer because it exercised significant control over her job. It also highlights the broader policy ramifications of the WNBA’s arguments, especially for low-wage workers who face employment abuses in industries that look very different from professional sports.
The brief explains: “Increasingly, and across industries, workers’ jobs are controlled by multiple entities, whether those be a team and a league or a fast-food franchise and its parent company. Fissuring is especially common in low wage sectors ripe with abuses, such as retail and agricultural work. This makes it all the more troubling that corporations often try to take advantage of the fissured workplace to disclaim employment relationships with their workers and so avoid the reach of employment laws, as the WNBA does here in moving to dismiss Ms. Hamby’s claims against it.”
The amicus brief was filed by Public Justice attorneys Alexandra Brodsky, Shelby Leighton, and Rohan Shetty and Keren Gesund, a partner at the law firm of LaFleur & Laborde in Las Vegas.
Public Justice Senior Attorney Alexandra Brodsky said: “Dearica is an exceptional athlete. But her story, unfortunately, is not unique. Too many workers experience discrimination and retaliation on the job. And when they sue, too many corporations try to weasel out of their responsibilities by pretending they didn’t have an employment relationship with their mistreated employees, and so are not subject to employment laws. By rejecting the WNBA’s motion to dismiss, the Nevada court will have the opportunity to contribute to an important body of law that protects not only professional athletes but also the most vulnerable workers.”
