In April, top representatives from the Los Angeles Dodgers were seen yukking it up with President Donald Trump as he attacked Democratic senators as the World Series champions visited the White House.
Unsettling as it may have been to see leaders of Jackie Robinson’s former team giggling at the unhinged ramblings of a president whose administration sought to hide Robinson’s legacy, that chummy appearance doesn’t seem to have bought the team much goodwill from MAGA world.
A federal complaint filed Monday by America First Legal — the right-wing activist group founded by White House policy director Stephen Miller — accuses the Dodgers organization of engaging in illegal discrimination because the organization has employee resource groups meant to aid Black, Latino and Asian employees, and because the company’s website promotes the value of its diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Under Trump’s second administration, which has given rise to various forms of blatant bigotry, these are the kinds of traditionally anodyne things that draw outcries for federal intervention. America First Legal lobs similar DEI claims against Guggenheim Partners, the investment firm led by Dodgers majority owner Mark Walter.
The complaint reads:
The Los Angeles Dodgers and Guggenheim Partners have represented to the public that they have engaged — and continue to engage — in unlawful employment discrimination under the guise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”). It is unlawful — even when using inclusive terminology — to segregate or classify employees or applicants for employment in ways that would deprive, or tend to deprive individuals of employment, training, or promotions because of their race, color, sex, or national origin.
The Dodgers declined to comment. Guggenheim Partners did not immediately return MSNBC’s request for comment.
For the record, there’s no evidence that any of these employee programs actually engaged in discrimination — although many conservatives seem to believe that the mere existence of such programs is some sort of affront to white men.
America First Legal’s complaint — perhaps, coincidentally — comes after a recent incident in which the Dodgers organization said it turned away officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seeking entry into the team’s stadium grounds amid widespread immigration raids in Los Angeles.
This morning, ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots. They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization. Tonight’s game will be played as scheduled. False. We were never there. https://t.co/ZquYiW0miQ ICE, for the record, initially claimed this was false, but a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson later told NBC News that U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles “were in the stadium parking lot very briefly, unrelated to any operation or enforcement.” In recent months, the Dodgers organization has come under fire from its fans — many of whom are Latino — over its muted response to the immigration raids. But the team is increasingly finding itself at the center of culture war issues that, from my vantage point, are making that approach very difficult.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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