This Boston Anchor's Lawsuit is Getting Ugly

FTVLive told you that former WBZ anchor Kate Merrill was suing the station and others in what she claimed was a “reverse discrimination” case.

The former WBZ anchor is suing the CBS O&O for racial and gender discrimination.

The Boston Herald reports that Merrill left the station under a cloud of mystery last year. Then earlier this year, she sued WBZ, CBS, Paramount and others in federal court — claiming that she was illegally pushed out from the station after more than 20 years as WBZ advanced “a DEI agenda.”

WBZ and the other defendants are pushing back, according to federal court filings. The defendants have filed a motion to dismiss for many of her claims.

In the motion to dismiss filing from WBZ and the other defendants, the lawyers write that one of the claims should be tossed because Merrill doesn’t “plausibly allege” she was treated differently because of her gender.

“It instead focuses entirely on race, alleging the Corporate Defendants made employment decisions based on unlawful racial preferences that pervaded the company, at WBZ and elsewhere within Paramount,” the attorneys wrote.

“Indeed, several allegations even describe the Corporate Defendants as advancing women over men, highlighting the alleged replacement of White male anchors with a Black female anchor and reporter or the lack of discipline given to a Black female executive for improper racial preferences,” they added.

The lawyers are also trying to toss her defamation claim. Merrill alleges that a WBZ exec “unnecessarily” publicly announced her schedule change in two separate staff meetings to all WBZ personnel.

She alleges that by making this announcement at the conclusion of the investigation, the exec sent the false message to her colleagues that she had engaged in serious wrongdoing.

“This is far from sufficient to support a defamation claim,” the attorneys wrote. “To establish a defamation claim under Massachusetts law, Merrill must prove, among other things, a false and defamatory communication… A true statement cannot support a defamation claim.”

Full story at the Herald.