“I got fired for being kind, and I got fired for an email that I didn’t send,” Swinehart said in an interview with the Athletic. “And that’s really tough. That’s really sad.”
A former Charlotte FC executive is suing the team’s owner, Tepper Sports & Entertainment, claiming that he lost his job due to blatant gender discrimination.
According to The New York Times, the lawsuit was filed Thursday in North Carolina Superior Court. It names Dustin Swineheart, a former professional soccer player who served as the team’s director of community engagement, as plaintiff. Attorneys for Swinehart say that he was fired in 2024 after a colleague sent an email to a local family after a “supervisory lapse” at a youth camp held by the team.
The lawsuit claims that Tepper Sports & Entertainment holds its male and female employees to different standards, such that Swinehart was quickly fired for a mistake that Tepper’s women workers have made without incurring any significant disciplinary consequence.
Swinehart, who played under the United Soccer League from 1996 to 2009, said that began butting heads with the company’s chief human resource officer, Kisha Smith, shortly after the 2024 youth camp incident. Before that, Swinehart and Smith had had few meaningful interactions.
The incident, notes the New York Times, occurred when two boys walked away from the camp during the middle of the day; they were later found unharmed. During a meeting about how to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future, Smith said that the boys’ families should receive any written communications from Tepper, a recommendation that Swinehart’s attorneys claim exceeded her authority and was issued without support of the company’s in-house counsel.
Swinehart’s boss, the lawsuit says, later approved his plan to refund the family’s camp payments and extend an offer for the family to attend an upcoming Charlotte FC game in a team suite.
“This is incredibly kind and totally unnecessary,” the father said of the offer upon receiving it on August 13, 2024. “But I am not one to pass up an opportunity to be in the suit.”
Swinehart then asked a member of the organization to coordinate with the family, which was done through email. According to Swinehart, Smith soon called him and began berating him for not following her recommendation.
“Without so much as a hello [she] aggressively interrogated him about why an email had gone out to the family,” the lawsuit states.
Shortly afterward, he was fired for “insubordination,” despite the plan having been approved by another manager and the email having been sent by a another worker.
“I got fired for being kind, and I got fired for an email that I didn’t send,” Swinehart said in an interview with the Athletic. “And that’s really tough. That’s really sad.”
Swinehart’s lawsuit describes a culture of impropriety among Tepper’s female staff, accusing employees of drinking on the job and using racially-charged language—acts that he says went largely unpunished when committed by women. Attorneys for Swinehart say this is a clear-cut consequence of TSE’s prioritization of putting women in leadership roles irrespective of their actual qualifications and general lack of experience with professional soccer.
“The evidence shows that had Plaintiff been female, he would not have been terminated. After all, he was the longest-tenured CFC employee and had amassed an exemplary employment record without blemish. The incident for which he was terminated caused no harm to the defendant,” the lawsuit alleges. “Rather, his sole offense awas to irk Defendant’s powerful CHRO because his direct report confirmed the family’s receipt of the refund and their interest in attending a match in a suite via email instead of a phone call.”
Swinehart emphasized that, while he personally supports gender- and diversity-related goals, he believes that TSE’s publicly-proclaimed desire to be a leader on inclusion has left its male employees unsure of where they stand; he also said that it has led to an unusually high rate of turnover.
“I think, specifically, to kind of the celebration of the advancement of women, it felt more presented as, “This is great. Look at all the things that are happening,’” Swinehart told the Athletic. “But you could just start to notice, like, okay—so where does this leave me, or where does this leave other employees with opportunities?”
Joshua Van Kampen, an attorney representing Swinehart, said that he typically represents women in gender discrimination claims. In this case, he said, Tepper “had ample opportunity to make peace and did not.” He emphasized that he and his client are unequivocally “not of the ilk that attack companies that have DEI programs” and that he, personally, “detests companies that drop their DEI programs” under pressure.
But, Van Kampen said, “there are some employers that can take it to the extremer, where there’s just a glaring disparate and preferential treatment toward women, and that requires action in court.”
Sources
Lawsuit alleges Charlotte FC, Panthers parent company discriminates against men
Tepper Sports is ‘broken’ and favors women, former Charlotte FC employee alleges
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