The Sting of Anti-Discrimination Litigation: Plenty of Pain as Legal Precedents are Set It's rare indeed for a news business employee to win a discrimination lawsuit such as the one Connecticut TV anchorwoman Janet Peckinpaugh filed against her former employer, Hartford's WFSB-TV. It's even more rare for the winner of such a lawsuit to get another high profile job in the same part of the country. The victory didn't come without a high price for Peckinpaugh, now a top-rated morning drive anchor at Hartford's NBC television station, or without a lot of hard work by her impassioned attorney, David Golub. In fact, the work isn't yet over, as the defendants, who Golub says were "flabbergasted" by their loss, are appealing the verdict. Peckinpaugh and Golub got a warm reception and plenty of applause as they spoke at the New York Press Club on September 23rd, 1999, sharing their thoughts on the pain behind the battle, the strategy that won in court, and the reactions and impact within the media. "I never wanted to sue," says Peckinpaugh. "It's a frightening thing to do: it takes your whole life away." She points out that earlier in her career, she ran into another workplace situation which could have prompted her to call a lawyer; she chose instead to handle it quietly by finding another job in another city. At WFSB-TV in Hartford, she rose to become the highest paid anchor in the state, with the best ratings, so it came as a shock to be kicked off the broadcast into a less prestigious assignment, by station managers telling her they needed a man, to get that male-female pairing which is so popular among station managers. "The decision to sue," recalls Peckinpaugh, "was a difficult one. I sued because I couldn't get another job. People kept saying: you are so great, why were you demoted? What's wrong with you, are you an alcoholic, can't you get along with others, what is it? I didn't have an answer...That's why I sued. 44 years old and I couldn't get hired." Peckinpaugh told of the pain both she and her son endured Peckinpaugh: "In a business where we consider ourselves watchdogs, I think it's time we begin to look at ourselves." from the moment she was demoted until the moment the verdict was read. "I lost my job, my house, and some friends. I lost a 7-year-long relationship…Things happened to me that were very unkind. All of a sudden I was an outcast…DJs on the radio were laughing about it…It was hard for my son." Others in the media were quietly supporting her. "I had some people behind me, but not openly. I didn't want them to jeopardize their careers." Eventually, she was hired by Hartford's NBC affiliate, which she says "had puppies' feet, terrible ratings," working the early morning shift for $40,000 a year, along with two outside jobs. It was a steep decline from the $250,000 Peckinpaugh had earned at her previous job, a salary level she notes she'd "worked up to." Peckinpaugh is unstinting in her praise of the attorney who took on her case. "David Golub believed in me. This man has stood behind me for five years. In the courtroom, I'd look around, [the TV station] had ten attorneys on their side, and then on our side, I'd see this guy [Golub], running all around…the judge doesn't like him, but I see the jury listening to everything he says." Golub: "A newspaper could never say: we're hiring a reporter, we already have a woman, so we want a man." Golub was surprised to find that he could not get anyone in the business to openly testify in court that it was a discriminatory practice to consider a person's gender as a primary requirement for a job. "Many people that I talked to took the position that it was not only legal, but desirable, for gender to be a factor in news pairings. Many furthermore took the position that news pairings based on gender actually enhanced the position of women." Golub points out that such discrimination is expressly forbidden by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it was on this rock that he built the winning case for Peckinpaugh. Peckinpaugh also sued on the issue of age discrimination, a count on which the TV station was not convicted. Golub says the evidence to prove that charge was not as solid. As for the gender discrimination charge, which Peckinpaugh won, Golub says: "It was a wonderful morality story, from a very persuasive witness." He kept his argument simple: "Hiring decisions have to be based on merit somehow, even a study showing [a news pairing] would make better ratings would qualify as a justification. ..Janet's case was easier because the ratings were great and they bumped her out of her job. Losing her job when the ratings were good because they wanted a man. I didn't think the jury would like that and it didn't." Golub has a theory about why the verdict came as such a surprise to WFSB-TV. "[The defendants] had been in the news business a long time, they were used to making the decisions that control the flow in information in a news broadcast. I don't think they understood that in a courtroom, they wouldn't be in control of a jury's receipt of information." What has been the impact of the verdict on the way hiring decisions are being made in the industry? Peckinpaugh says she hears that stations in Connecticut are no longer telling agents the gender of the anchors they'd like to hire. Golub sees a lot of ground yet to cover in prevailing attitudes, and commented on the fact that CBS referred to its recently concluded search for a morning show co-anchor as "Operation Glass Slipper." Golub: "Janet's ex-husband and people who still worked at the station testified for Janet. Why would they lie?" Golub also has a prediction: "It's just a matter of time before what happened to Janet is litigated again and…litigated as a class action." That may not be Golub's battle, however. He's busy defending the Peckinpaugh verdict on appeal.