The lawsuit claimed that the defendant fired the plaintiffs because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s financial difficulties. “COVID-19 was a ruse to fire plaintiffs from their jobs.”DETROIT (AP) – Two former scouts for the Detroit Tigers filed a lawsuit against the team, claiming they were fired following the 2020 season due to age discrimination.
In their lawsuit, filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Gary Pellant and Randall Johnson assert that the move toward analytics was followed by a “false stereotype” that older scouts were less adept at using newer scouting techniques.
They allege that the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, a 1977 Michigan legislation, and the Age Discrimination and Enforcement Act of 1967 were violated by their wrongful termination and post-termination employment interference. Additionally, they claimed that the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act had been violated by age discrimination based on differential treatment and/or disproportionate impact.
They demanded punitive and compensatory damages, as well as upfront and back pay.
An inquiry for comment was not immediately answered by the Tigers.
In June, seventeen former scouts for Major League Baseball filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver against the league, its franchises, and Commissioner Rob Manfred. They accused them of breaking the ADEA, as well as statutes in New York City and eleven other states.
Johnson, 67, is from Valley Center, California, and Pellant, 68, is from Chandler, Arizona. The two claimed that before being let go by the Tigers on October 31, 2020, they had worked for more than 20 different teams. Which other clubs they worked for and the date of their Tigers hire were not disclosed in the lawsuit.
The decision by the defendant and the MLB to replace older employees with younger ones has resulted in the separation of hundreds, if not thousands, of employees from employment with the defendant in the last eight years, according to the lawsuit.
“MLB endeavored to begin heavily recruiting younger scouts, at the same time intentionally pushing out from the older scouts with prior knowledge, qualifications, expertise, and training, based on a false stereotype that older scouts lacked the ability to use analytics and engage in video scouting with the same acumen as younger scouts,” the lawsuit further stated. Manfred was appointed commissioner in January 2015.
The two claimed that four Tigers scouts who were over 60 had been let go, while the other scouts’ ages ranged from early 20s to early 50s. According to the lawsuit, out of the 30 clubs, at least 83 “older scouts” were let go.
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