Mo’Nique, Netflix Settle Gender & Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Over Pay For Comedy Special – Update
deadline.com2ND UPDATE, 9:45 AM: Mo’Nique and Netflix have settled the lawsuit she filed against the streaming company in 2019 claiming racial and gender bias, Deadline has confirmed.
Details of the deal weren’t disclosed. Read about the case below.UPDATED, July 2, 2020: Subscribers and revenues may be up for Netflix, but a federal judge has denied the streamer’s second motion to throw out Mo’Nique’s racial and gender bias lawsuit against the now Ted Sarandos co-CEO’d company.The comic and Precious Oscar winner, real name Monique Hicks, says the $500,000 she was first offered by Netflix in 2017 for a stand-up special was not just an insult but illegal.
Her gender and racial discrimination filing of last November over pay for a potential comedy special cites the tens of millions reportedly paid to the likes of Amy Schumer, Ricky Gervais, Ellen DeGeneres and Dave Chappelle for their Netflix specials.The 2019 suit also alleges that “Netflix’s treatment of Mo’Nique began with a discriminatory low-ball offer and ended with a blacklisting act of retaliation.”In rejecting the streamer’s motion to dismiss, Judge Andre Birotte Jr.
said yesterday, “Mo’Nique plausibly alleges that, after she spoke out and called her initial offer discriminatory, Netflix retaliated against her by shutting down its standard practice of negotiating in good faith that typically results in increased monetary compensation beyond the ‘opening offer’ and denying her increased compensation as a result” (Read the full ruling here).“While Netflix argues that the novelty of Mo’Nique’s claim and the absence of on-point legal authority for it should bar her retaliation claims outright, the Court disagrees,” the U.S.
