Charter Opposes Amending of Racial Discrimination Carriage Complaint
As part of "an established pattern ... of strong-arm tactics" to coerce channel carriage, the motion by Entertainment Studios Networks (ESN) and the National Association for African American Owned Media (NAAAOM) for leave to file an amended complaint against Charter…
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Communications should be denied, Charter said in its opposition (in Pacer) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. In its request (in Pacer) filed in July to file an amended version of its $10 billion discrimination complaint that also targeted the FCC (see 1601280063), ESN/NAAAOM said they planned to cite "powerful additional evidence of racial animus by top executives," including Charter Senior Vice President-Programming Allan Singer's allegedly making racist comments in March to protesters outside Charter's Connecticut headquarters and CEO Tom Rutledge's allegedly calling ESN CEO Byron Allen "boy" while at the Cable Hall of Fame dinner in May. In its opposition, Charter said ESN/NAAAOM "have decided to up the ante in a bid to perpetuate this scam of a lawsuit" by adding "demonstrably false and incendiary allegations" aimed at embarrassing and harassing Charter executives. The motion should be denied on bad-faith grounds, Charter said, pointing to previous ESN/NAAAOM lawsuits against other multichannel video programming distributors as evidence of "a transparent scheme to pressure distributors with sensational lawsuits." Charter also said the motion should be denied because the proposed amendments don't address that the First Amendment forecloses the ESN/NAAAOM claims since MVPDs' carriage decisions are protected. ESN/NAAAOM also are pursuing litigation and related FCC complaint against Comcast (see 1606100017).