A former Phoenix Suns employee has sued the franchise for discrimination and retaliation, alleging she was fired for trying to implement changes in the company’s workplace culture in the wake of the scandal that led to Robert Sarver selling the team in 2022. Andrea Trischan filed a complaint Wednesday against the organization in U.S. District Court in Arizona, seeking unspecified damages.
The Suns hired Trischan as a diversity, equity and inclusion manager in the fall of 2022 as the franchise responded to allegations of a discriminatory and abusive work environment in a bombshell ESPN story about its then-owner Sarver and other Suns executives. Trischan said she was quickly throttled on the job and alleged that key Suns executives continued to display discriminatory, racist or predatory behavior toward other employees in the organization. Trischan, in her complaint, said she was ultimately put on administrative leave and then fired after less than a year for trying to investigate and address those issues.
“The evidence will speak for itself,” Sheree Wright, a lawyer for Trischan, said. “I mean it’s disgusting that the Phoenix Suns organization had to make it come to this point where everything was going to be public. And I guarantee you there are witnesses who corroborated everything, and there are individuals and current employees and former employees that can corroborate everything, so the evidence is going to be so substantial that it’s going to outweigh any claims that they make.”
Trischan filed complaints with Arizona’s Attorney General’s office and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in the summer of 2023. She is awaiting a response from the EEOC, and Wright said she intends to re-file her complaint with new claims when the EEOC does so. After an investigation, the Attorney General’s office decided not to file a case. A spokesman for the Attorney General’s office declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of civil rights investigations.
“Ms. Trischan’s case was dismissed by the Arizona Attorney General’s office earlier this week,” said Stacey Mitch, the Phoenix Suns and Phoenix Mercury’s senior vice president of communications.” Her claims have been without merit from day one, and now this lawsuit, in which she is seeking $60 million, is based on the same claims that were just dismissed. We are fully confident the courts will agree her story is completely fabricated.”
Trischan did not specify a total for damages in her complaint to the U.S. District Court. Wright, the attorney for Trischan, said she settled on $60 million when she submitted a damages assessment during mediation between Trischan and the Suns earlier this year.
In her lawsuit, Trischan outlines a continued pattern of discrimination and dismissiveness by Suns executives in the months after she joined the organization, which came shortly after the NBA suspended Sarver for a year and fined him $10 million in September 2022 after its own investigation into the franchise amid reported allegations of misogyny and racism.
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Trischan said that soon after she was hired, the Suns started a diversity council but that Kim Corbitt, the team’s senior VP of People & Culture, gave her a list of executives to put on it and told Trischan they were on it because it could “reshape their image,” according to the complaint. Those executives — Jason Rowley, Dan Costello, Melissa Goldenberg and Kyle Pottinger — had been implicated in the ESPN reports about the Suns, Trischan said. Trischan said her colleagues told her that they continued with their misconduct while she was there.
Rowley resigned as the Suns’ president and CEO in February 2023. Goldenberg left the organization this year, according to ESPN, though her LinkedIn still lists her as the Suns’ senior VP and general counsel. Pottinger, formerly the Suns’ senior vice president of ticket sales and service, left the organization last month, according to his LinkedIn. Costello is the Suns’ executive VP and chief revenue officer.
Trischan said she was punished for continuing to do her job. She alleges in her complaint that she was put on administrative leave and a performance improvement plan after a May 2023 meeting in which she tried to create more cohesion amongst the franchise’s human resources team. When she was fired, Trischan said Corbitt cited a failure to “create an inclusive culture.”
Trischan also alleges the Suns did not comply with league mandates that came as a result of the Sarver investigation. The NBA, when it released the findings of its investigation, said the Suns were required to fulfill five requirements to create improvements in their workplace. The organization, the complaint said, “failed to fully implement and follow through on the NBA’s mandated workplace improvements until Plaintiff’s filing of her charge of discrimination brought additional scrutiny to the organization.”
The NBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Trischan’s allegation that the Suns did not comply with league mandates.
(Photo: Luke Hales / Getty Images)
