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L.A. Clippers’ Sterling Settles Housing Bias Lawsuit
Donald Sterling, owner of the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Clippers, agreed to pay $2.73 million to settle a U.S. government lawsuit in which he was accused of housing discrimination.
The payment is the largest ever obtained by the government in a discrimination case involving apartment rentals, the Justice Department said today in a statement.
“Housing is a basic human need, and yet decades after passage of the Fair Housing Act far too many still encounter barriers like discrimination,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in the statement. “The magnitude of this settlement should send a message to all landlords that we will vigorously pursue violations of the Fair Housing Act.”
The government sued Sterling in August 2006, saying he discriminates against Black and Hispanic prospective tenants in buildings he owns in Los Angeles’s Koreatown area. Sterling owns about 119 apartment buildings in Los Angeles County, according to the Justice Department’s statement.
The Sterling Family Trust denied any liability as part of the settlement, Robert Platt, a lawyer representing Sterling, said in an e-mailed statement.
“After three years of litigation, the fair-housing attorneys could not prove a single violation of the Fair Housing Act,” Platt said. “My clients vehemently and unequivocally denied that anyone was discriminated against.”
The insurance companies for the family trust wanted to settle because the cost of continuing the lawsuit exceeded the cost of settling, according to the statement.
• In 2003, 19 tenants and the Housing Rights Center filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against Sterling, one of the biggest landowners in Los Angeles. (That case, too, was settled.) According to depositions given by one of Sterling's property supervisors and obtained by ESPN The Magazine's Peter Keating, Sterling didn't like renting to Black people, Mexican-Americans and people with children, though he did like Koreans because "they will take whatever conditions I give them and still pay the rent." (The property supervisor, Sumner Davenport, sued Sterling for sexual harassment. She lost.)
• When a tenant asked to be compensated for water damage in her flooded apartment, Sterling allegedly told Davenport, "Just evict the bitch."
• According to former general manger Elgin Baylor, Sterling envisioned a "Southern Plantation type structure" for the Clippers, one in which, as he allegedly put it to Baylor, "poor black boys from the South" played for a white head coach.
• Sterling bought the Clippers in 1981 for $13 million. The franchise is now valued at $300 million. On his watch, the Clippers have lost 50 games in a season 20 times. Long ago, Sterling realized — correctly — that an owner could turn a tidy and effortless profit under the NBA's revenue-sharing system merely by losing cheaply and relying on the league's ever-fattening coffers.
• The NBA once fined Sterling $10,000 for suggesting the Clippers tank to help their draft position.
• As reported here, Sterling's scorekeepers in the late 1990s routinely and dramatically undercounted the Clippers' assist totals. Deliberate or not, the effect was to depress the value of the team's own players.
• According to Franz Lidz in Sports Illustrated, Sterling would refuse to add players even after injuries left the roster at the league minimum of eight. "The Clippers came close to forfeiting a game after forward Michael Brooks had oral surgery," Lidz wrote. "Brooks had to suit up, and he actually played, though his jaw was as swollen as Sterling's ego."
• Sterling once welshed on a $1,000 prize for a free-throw shooting contest, forcing the winner, a lawyer and season ticketholder named Michael Spilger, to sue. More than a year later, according to Lidz, Spilger got his money.
• During his first season as owner, according to Sports Illustrated, Sterling reportedly wanted to save money by jettisoning the team trainer. He asked coach Paul Silas if he would mind taping up players before games.
• According to Sports Illustrated: "Sterling is also said to have proposed to trim the team budget for his second season by slashing training-camp expenses from more than $50,000 to about $100, scouting from more than $20,000 to about $1,000, advertising from more than $200,000 to less than $9,000 and medical expenses from about $10,000 to $100."
• Sterling would solicit "hostesses" for private parties and Clippers events, one of whom told ESPN The Magazine: "Working for Donald Sterling was the most demoralizing, dehumanizing experience of my life. He asked me for seminude photos and made it clear he wanted more."
• A former employee sued Sterling for sexual harassment in 1996. According to testimony obtained by ESPN The Magazine, Sterling would order her to find massage therapists, saying, "I want someone who will, you know, let me put it in or who [will] suck on it." The case was settled.
• In 2003, Sterling acknowledged paying a woman named Alexandra Castro $500 every time "she provided sex." He testified: "It was purely sex for money, money for sex, sex for money, money for sex." He would call her honey, but for decidedly unromantic reasons. "I'm a very flowery man," he said. "If you are having sex with a woman you are paying for, you always call her honey because you can't remember her name."
Source: deadspin.com
The payment is the largest ever obtained by the government in a discrimination case involving apartment rentals, the Justice Department said today in a statement.
“Housing is a basic human need, and yet decades after passage of the Fair Housing Act far too many still encounter barriers like discrimination,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in the statement. “The magnitude of this settlement should send a message to all landlords that we will vigorously pursue violations of the Fair Housing Act.”
The government sued Sterling in August 2006, saying he discriminates against Black and Hispanic prospective tenants in buildings he owns in Los Angeles’s Koreatown area. Sterling owns about 119 apartment buildings in Los Angeles County, according to the Justice Department’s statement.
The Sterling Family Trust denied any liability as part of the settlement, Robert Platt, a lawyer representing Sterling, said in an e-mailed statement.
“After three years of litigation, the fair-housing attorneys could not prove a single violation of the Fair Housing Act,” Platt said. “My clients vehemently and unequivocally denied that anyone was discriminated against.”
The insurance companies for the family trust wanted to settle because the cost of continuing the lawsuit exceeded the cost of settling, according to the statement.
• In 2003, 19 tenants and the Housing Rights Center filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against Sterling, one of the biggest landowners in Los Angeles. (That case, too, was settled.) According to depositions given by one of Sterling's property supervisors and obtained by ESPN The Magazine's Peter Keating, Sterling didn't like renting to Black people, Mexican-Americans and people with children, though he did like Koreans because "they will take whatever conditions I give them and still pay the rent." (The property supervisor, Sumner Davenport, sued Sterling for sexual harassment. She lost.)
• When a tenant asked to be compensated for water damage in her flooded apartment, Sterling allegedly told Davenport, "Just evict the bitch."
• According to former general manger Elgin Baylor, Sterling envisioned a "Southern Plantation type structure" for the Clippers, one in which, as he allegedly put it to Baylor, "poor black boys from the South" played for a white head coach.
• Sterling bought the Clippers in 1981 for $13 million. The franchise is now valued at $300 million. On his watch, the Clippers have lost 50 games in a season 20 times. Long ago, Sterling realized — correctly — that an owner could turn a tidy and effortless profit under the NBA's revenue-sharing system merely by losing cheaply and relying on the league's ever-fattening coffers.
• The NBA once fined Sterling $10,000 for suggesting the Clippers tank to help their draft position.
• As reported here, Sterling's scorekeepers in the late 1990s routinely and dramatically undercounted the Clippers' assist totals. Deliberate or not, the effect was to depress the value of the team's own players.
• According to Franz Lidz in Sports Illustrated, Sterling would refuse to add players even after injuries left the roster at the league minimum of eight. "The Clippers came close to forfeiting a game after forward Michael Brooks had oral surgery," Lidz wrote. "Brooks had to suit up, and he actually played, though his jaw was as swollen as Sterling's ego."
• Sterling once welshed on a $1,000 prize for a free-throw shooting contest, forcing the winner, a lawyer and season ticketholder named Michael Spilger, to sue. More than a year later, according to Lidz, Spilger got his money.
• During his first season as owner, according to Sports Illustrated, Sterling reportedly wanted to save money by jettisoning the team trainer. He asked coach Paul Silas if he would mind taping up players before games.
• According to Sports Illustrated: "Sterling is also said to have proposed to trim the team budget for his second season by slashing training-camp expenses from more than $50,000 to about $100, scouting from more than $20,000 to about $1,000, advertising from more than $200,000 to less than $9,000 and medical expenses from about $10,000 to $100."
• Sterling would solicit "hostesses" for private parties and Clippers events, one of whom told ESPN The Magazine: "Working for Donald Sterling was the most demoralizing, dehumanizing experience of my life. He asked me for seminude photos and made it clear he wanted more."
• A former employee sued Sterling for sexual harassment in 1996. According to testimony obtained by ESPN The Magazine, Sterling would order her to find massage therapists, saying, "I want someone who will, you know, let me put it in or who [will] suck on it." The case was settled.
• In 2003, Sterling acknowledged paying a woman named Alexandra Castro $500 every time "she provided sex." He testified: "It was purely sex for money, money for sex, sex for money, money for sex." He would call her honey, but for decidedly unromantic reasons. "I'm a very flowery man," he said. "If you are having sex with a woman you are paying for, you always call her honey because you can't remember her name."
Source: deadspin.com