The owner of WISH-8 and WNDY-20 in Indianapolis, through his legal counsel at Bose McKinney & Evans, on Tuesday proved good to his word by filing an appeal of a U.S. District Court decision that presented a victory to both DirecTV and Dish Network, and dismissed twin racial discrimination claims filed against the digital broadcast satellite service providers.
The decision by DuJuan McCoy and his Circle City Broadcasting was anticipated, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit will soon sign an appellate case number to the appeal.
McCoy’s desire: To have this court overturn a decision from Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, the Chief Judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.
The legal matter dates to March 10, 2020, when a summons was issued to Dish Network. On August 11, 2020, a summons was issued to AT&T Corp. for DirecTV.
The ultimate goal? McCoy seeks a return of his stations, which serve as affiliates of The CW Network and MyNetwork TV in the Indianapolis DMA, to both Dish and DirecTV.
Circle City in 2020 sued Dish on the grounds that it refused to offer fair-market compensation for airing WISH-8, Indianapolis’ home for The CW, and MyNetwork sibling WNDY-23. The matter resulted from a reset of the stations’ retransmission consent fees, as Nexstar Media Group‘s sale agreement signed by McCoy stated that Dish and DirecTV would not be required to keep the rates negotiated by Nexstar should any sale of the stations transpire during the period for which they were set.
McCoy knew that, and presented retransmission rates he thought were justified. DirecTV and Dish responded with rates he not only couldn’t accept but argued were so low, the decisionmaking process by each of the DBS providers was racially motivated.
When evaluating a race discrimination claim, a district court must determine “whether the evidence would permit a reasonable factfinder to conclude that the plaintiff’s race . . . caused” the adverse action; she cited the 2016 case Ortiz v. Werner Enters. Inc..
Then, there is a Comcast case that says “a plaintiff bears the burden of showing that race
was a but-for cause of its injury.”
DirecTV argued Circle City cannot meet this burden, and did not treat Circle City any different than any other owner.
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