Fox isn’t exactly known for fostering ethical work environments. However, a new lawsuit against Fox Sports, marquee commentator Skip Bayless, and network executive Charlie Dixon has sent shockwaves through the sports broadcasting industry, emphasizing a bleak reality for women in the field.
On January 3, a former hairstylist for the network, Noushin Faraji, filed a lawsuit accusing Bayless, the former co-host of Skip and Shannon: Undisputed from 2016 to 2024, of making unwanted sexual advances toward her, including offering her $1.5 million to sleep with him. The plaintiff also says that Dixon, executive vice president of content at Fox Sports 1, groped her at a party and sexually pursued other women employees.
Other notable defendants listed in the complaint include popular Fox Sports 1 host Joy Taylor, who allegedly dismissed Faraji when she confided in her about the groping incident in 2017 and began mocking her accent in 2021. In one of the lawsuit’s more salacious claims, the plaintiff says that Taylor engaged in a sexual relationship with Dixon to get a position on Undisputed.
The lawsuit alleges a harrowing saga of systematic abuse and complicity over almost a decade. Despite the breadth of the allegations, the majority of online backlash by sports fans, tabloids, and even some commentators has unsurprisingly been directed at Taylor. It reveals a double bind for women working in male-dominated environments, who find themselves in a “damned if do, damned if you don’t” position when it comes to sexuality in the workplace. The online response to Taylor, however, shows a gross enthusiasm by men to discredit women in sports journalism. In an industry that on the surface seems like it’s embracing more women, there seems to be no way to win.
What exactly is Faraji alleging?
In the 42-page lawsuit, initially reported by Front Office Sports, Faraji’s attorneys say that she was “forced to endure a misogynistic, racist, and ableist workplace where executives and talent were allowed to physically and verbally abuse workers with impunity.” It includes counts of sexual battery, hostile work environment, retaliation, and wrongful termination. Faraji is also requesting that her suit be certified as a class action. The complaint includes allegations on behalf of other anonymous Fox employees in California regarding unfair wages and illegal business practices. Fox Corporation, Fox Sports Holding, LLC, Fox Sports 1 LLC, Fox Sports 2 LLC, Dixon, Bayless, Taylor and several anonymous Fox employees are listed as defendants.
In the initial reporting of the lawsuit, Fox Sports told Front Office Sports, “We take these allegations seriously and have no further comment at this time given this pending litigation.” Representatives for Dixon, Bayless, and Taylor have yet to comment on the situation. Taylor, however, resumed hosting on FS1’s show Speak on Monday without addressing the lawsuit.
According to the complaint, Faraji began as a part-time hairstylist for Fox in 2012 before being hired full-time in 2016. In 2016, she befriended Taylor, who was then working on a day-to-day basis for the network. It was through Taylor — who Faraji eventually styled on Undisputed and, later, Speak — that she first became aware of Dixon’s alleged sexual impropriety with women employees at Fox.
Faraji says she discovered that Taylor and Dixon had a sexual relationship in 2016 after he began accompanying Taylor on their social outings. A couple of months later, it was announced that Taylor was hired for the then newly announced Undisputed television show as a moderator.
The complaint alleges that Dixon gave Taylor the job as a “reward” for their relationship. Faraji also claims she heard that Dixon also punished women at the network for not obliging to his sexual demands. Faraji says in the lawsuit that an anonymous woman employee claimed to have been let go for rejecting Dixon’s advances and that another talk show host had reported his predatory behavior to the network.
In 2017, Faraji had her own run-in with Dixon at Taylor’s birthday party. Faraji alleges that the executive grabbed her butt while they were standing at a bar. Faraji says that when she confided in Taylor about the incident, Taylor told her to “get over it.”
At the same time that Taylor was allegedly seeing Dixon, Faraji claims Taylor also began dating ex-NFL player and network talent Emmanuel Acho, in hopes that he would recommend her for Speak. Faraji says she advised her not to see Dixon and Acho at the same time, as Dixon might retaliate against her. Taylor allegedly responded that she would tell the company that Dixon “forced himself on her” and that she wouldn’t be “forced out by Mr. Dixon” like other women.
Faraji alleges that she started experiencing harassment from Bayless while working as a full-time hairstylist on Undisputed beginning in 2017. Faraji says that Bayless would give her “lingering hugs” and “kisses on the cheek” before becoming “more aggressive and direct” with his advances, which she consistently declined. In 2021, she told Bayless about a cancer scare involving her left ovary hoping he would back off. In response, she says, he offered her $1.5 million to have sex with him, which she rejected. According to the complaint, Bayless continued making advances over the years, eventually accusing Faraji of sleeping with his co-star and “rival” Shannon Sharpe — which she denies — and threatening her job at one point.
Throughout her tenure, Faraji, who’s Iranian, says she experienced sexual and racial harassment from a mic technician (who allegedly doubled as an on-set cocaine dealer). She claims she was called a “Persian b****” by an unnamed employee (called “Ms. M” in the suit).Taylor also allegedly mocked her English and complained about her habitual humming, which Faraji says is a coping mechanism for her diagnosed PTSD. Faraji says a co-worker reported Ms. M to human resources on her behalf in 2020 while she told a supervisor about her issues with Taylor to her supervisor in 2023. But she says both incidents were ultimately dismissed or handled poorly by higher-ups.
By August 2024, Faraji was taken off the work schedule. Her termination came a year after she participated in an internal investigation in which she says she was asked about Taylor’s relationships with Dixon and Acho. During this time, Faraji claims that Bayless was asked by human resources whether she had offered him sex. When Bayless responded no, they allegedly “impli[ed] that they wanted him to say otherwise.” Her complaint describes this as the company’s “common tactic” of retaliating against employees who were either “witness[es] or target[s]” of bad behavior, although Fox told Faraji they could no longer afford her services. Faraji is now seeking unspecified monetary damages and a jury trial.
Indeed, this is hardly new territory for Fox, although most of the corporation’s history of misconduct allegations have occurred under their news arm. In 2016, a number of women Fox News employees, including anchors Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly, accused now-deceased CEO and chair Roger Ailes of sexual harassment. In 2017, a bombshell New York Times investigation found that Fox News and Bill O’Reilly paid tens of millions of dollars to settle six allegations of sexual harassment and verbal abuse. Fox’s sports division isn’t unfamiliar with public scandals either. The same year, Fox Sports ousted its former president of national networks, Jamie Horowitz, for sexual harassment claims.
Sports fans are up in arms — but not about Dixon or Bayless
The coverage of the lawsuit within the sports world hasn’t been much better. Incendiary former Fox Sports host Jason Whitlock, known for his controversial takes on racial issues, had some sexist words for Taylor when discussing the lawsuit. On his show Fearless With Jason Whitlock this week, he called her a “symbol of this whole feminist movement” and said she exemplifies the consequences of “sharing everything with women.” Meanwhile, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy defended Taylor’s alleged relationships with her colleagues but rejected Faraji’s allegations, calling the lawsuit a “shakedown.” Notably, Sharpe didn’t have anything to say about his former co-host Bayless’ alleged behavior or his own involvement in the lawsuit when it was brought up on his podcast Nightcap. “That ain’t got nothing to do with me,” he said. “So there’s nothing to address.”
It’s not a surprise that most of the attention has fallen on Taylor in the aftermath online while Faraji’s allegations against Bayless and Dixon have caused less outrage. Many social media users expressed anger about the claim by the claim that she had planned to accuse Dixon of sexual misconduct if she faced retaliation for dating another man. Meanwhile, jokes about Taylor’s alleged relationships — including the fact that these salacious claims have the heat off of Bayless and Dixon — abound online.
Several users have suggested that Taylor’s alleged actions will negatively affect other women in sports journalism and cast doubt over their accomplishments. On one hand, it’s hard not to assume that Taylor’s part of the lawsuit will have negative repercussions for women. Male sports fans online are figuratively foaming at the mouth to purport the narrative that Taylor allegedly “slept her way to the top,” and some are even implying that other women sports reporters may have done the same. However, the discourse surrounding Taylor has exposed a long-standing problem facing women in the field.
The landscape of sports broadcasting has changed a lot — at least, cosmetically — for women over the past 50 years. In 1978, Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke had to sue the Major League Baseball for denying her access to players’ locker rooms. Now, women sports journalists, like Jemele Hill, Taylor Rooks, Erin Andrews, and Mina Kimes, are some of the most recognizable faces and awarded reporters in the industry — while still having to navigate their own challenges.
Andrews notably became a flash point the sort of misogyny women sportscasters can experience when a nonconsensual nude video of her was posted online in 2009 after she was stalked and secretly recorded in a hotel room. In 2017, after Hill called Donald Trump a “white supremacist” on social media, she faced a wave of misogynoir from critics online. More recently, Kimes was called a Japanese slur by a Boston radio host, while Rooks has had to defend her way of dressing against finger-wagging sports fans. Many issues remain for women in the industry regarding casual sexism, equal pay, and the ability to challenge sports narratives vocalized by their male counterparts.
Outside of issues they may face directly in the workplace, there’s the struggle to be taken seriously by audiences when reporting on a subject that only men are viewed as having true expertise in. Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton famously got in trouble in 2017 when he told a woman journalist that it was “funny” to hear her ask him about football. In a 2022 interview with The Cut, several women sports reporters spoke about the anxiety of having any sort of slip-up on-air, given the way male sports fans are eager to label them uninformed. “The fear of being wrong and losing credibility because of something really dumb is real,” NFL Network host Colleen Wolfe said.
The worry of being labeled unqualified — and the harassment that comes with it — seems to have made this lawsuit particularly bleak for women sports commentators. Contrary to popular takes on the internet, it’s not something that the allegations in this lawsuit has newly brought on but that misogynistic sports fans are happy to perpetuate.
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