Appeals court rejects WISH-TV owner’s racial discrimination claims
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The owner of WISH-TV failed to show evidence that a pair of television distributors racially discriminated against him in declining to pay retransmission fees to carry WISH and sister station WNDY-TV, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday in affirming a lower court’s decision.
The court ruled that when DISH and DirecTV Network declined to pay broadcast fees to Circle City Broadcasting for rights to carry the company’s two Indianapolis-based television stations, that decision did not reflect discrimination against Circle City’s majority owner, DuJuan McCoy, a Black man, or the company itself.
“For their part, DISH and DirecTV presented clear evidence of a race-neutral reason for their contractual negotiating decisions–Circle City’s lack of bargaining power,” the 7th Circuit Court ruled.
The ruling upholds an earlier decision by U.S. District Court in Indianapolis, which granted summary judgment in favor of DISH and DirecTV and concluded that Circle City failed to identify evidence permitting a jury to find that the decisions not to pay the broadcast fees reflected anything other than lawful business choices responsive to dynamics of the television broadcast market.
The case is Circle City Broadcasting I, LLC v. AT&T Services, Incorporated, and DirecTV, LLC, 23-1787, and Circle City Broadcasting I, LLC v. DISH Network LLC, 23-1788.