The Walt Disney Company welcomed pride month this year in less than ideal fashion with a major lawsuit from a longtime executive.
Joel Hopkins currently works as Vice President of Production Finance at ABC Signature. Deadline reports the lawsuit in question alleges that Hopkins’ superiors knew he is gay, and that he was consequently passed over for several promotions and pay raises.
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“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,” court filings by Hopkins’ attorneys read. “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.”
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“Plaintiff is informed and believes that these promotions occurred despite representations that Disney was hurting financially and not promoting,” the suit adds.
Hopkins will seek compensatory damages, punitive damages and various lawsuit costs with the suit. Hopkins first joined Disney in 1994 as Director of Production Finance for Buena Vista TV. He received a promotion in 2000 to VP Production Finance for Touchstone TV. Around the same time, he came out of the closet, and claims his career suffered in the 21 years since.
Disney has not made an official comment on the lawsuit. The company has long championed LGBTQ equality, employees, and recently, stories and characters in its associated properties.
Cam
Countdown to the same old right wing troll coming in here to find some reason to attack the guy who filed the suit.
Cato
I wish him luck. Discrimination lawsuits are incredibly difficult and the legal deck is stacked in favor of employers. I filed a combined discrimination and whistleblower lawsuit against a former employer – we ended up dropping the discrimination aspect because the state law at the time did not include LGBT protections, but during the discovery process they did everything possible to humiliate me and make it as costly as possible. They forced me to produce medical records, then questioned me (in front of the guy who fired me) about getting STI testing and my sexual history. It was embarrassing and cost every penny of savings I had.
In the end we prevailed on the whistleblower claim, but only because I had documented proof of efforts to commit fraud against the government. It cost two years of my life and financially I just about broke even. The only real victory was the sense of vindication and facing down the jerk who got me fired.
GayEGO
Hopefully Joel Hopkins will win and he will advance in his career.
Fahd
Hopkins is a 27+ years employee. What kind of corporate intrigue and lawyer advice led to Disney deciding they’d accept the bad publicity of not settling the suit until this point? I don’t believe Hopkins is the problem.
Also, Disney doesn’t pay its employees nearly what they should — imagine trying to get by in Southern California on a part-time, minimum wage job at Disneyland.
woodroad34
I worked for Disney in the past…it’s not really the happiest place on earth. And the person I worked for was gay as well and he was miserable too. He finally left and apologized to me for how I was treated by him.