On July 25, former vice president of Fox News Latino, Francisco Cortes, filed a lawsuit against 21st Century Fox. The lawsuit claimed that 21st Century Fox (NASDAQ:$FOXA) had violated terms of a $2.5 million settlement made after a former Fox News contractor, Tamara Holder, filed sexual harassment complaints against Cortes to the media giant.
According to a New York Times report, Holder informed Fox News last year that Cortes had sexually harassed her in 2015. Holder said that Cortes had invited her into his office, shut the door, poured the both of them tequila shots, then attempted to get her to perform oral sex on him while holding the office door closed. She then fled the room.
After the incident was reported, Cortes was fired from the company in October 2016 according to The New York Times. Fox News then reached the $2.5 million settlement with Holder in February 2017. One of the agreements of the settlement, Cortes claims, was that neither Fox nor Holder could discuss the sexual harassment case in a way that would disparage the former vice president. Cortes has claimed that Fox has failed to abide by this agreement in his lawsuit, saying that the joint statement Fox and Holder released regarding the settlement had damaged his reputation.
In his filing, Cortes also denied the sexual harassment allegations Holder made against him in 2016. He said that he plans to provide proof that his and Holder’s relationship was consensual via emails, text messages, photos, and other documentations. Cortes claimed that he could not deny the sexual harassment complaints because one of the terms in the February settlement had kept him from talking about the case.
Similarly, The New York Times reported that, while Holder was permitted to discuss the sexual harassment case with the news source, the settlement barred her from discussing anything regarding Fox News or the sexual harassment case and settlement with anyone else.
Cortes also alleged in his lawsuit against Fox that the company is using him in particular as a public example after Fox News faced a number of sexual harassment complaints in 2016. The complaints had lead to Roger Ailes, previous CEO of Fox News, and Bill O’Reilly, a Fox News anchor, to leave the company.
“Mr. Cortes, has, thus, served as a useful ‘scapegoat’ for FOX to help it demonstrate that it aggressively handles sexual harassment complaints, as part of a carefully orchestrated plan to permit the Murdochs to eliminate concerns in the U.K. regarding their $15.2 Billion acquisition of Sky in the U.K.,” Cortes’ lawsuit reads.
Cortes’ complaint also suggests that Holder had made sexual harassment complaints against two other employees at Fox, whose identities were protected. “These two UNKNOWN PERSONS, it must be assumed, were, unlike Mr. Cortes, not Latino, not financially insignificant to FOX, and not without some utility to Tamara Holder’s career if she would only agree to continue to protect them and shield their reputations from the damage necessarily incurred by accusations of sexual harassment,” the filing states. One of the unknown persons had been theorized to be particularly powerful and influential at Fox, and that was why they had been able to keep their identity unknown.
Besides power and influence, Cortes’ lawsuit also implies that part of the reason that he’d been publicly named was due to race. “The decision to ‘scapegoat’ Mr. Cortes was based, in part, on a willingness of FOX executives and the Murdochs to subscribe to a stereotype of the Hispanic man, and, in part, on their belief that anyone who was informed of the incident … would be willing to subscribe to this stereotype of the Hispanic man,” Cortes’ complaint says.
Cortes also complained that after The New York Times published its story on the sexual harassment case – which Holder had been given permission to discuss – talks of him joining three different networks were terminated.
When Business Insider reached out to Jay Sanchez, the lawyer representing Cortes in this lawsuit, he declined to give a detailed statement, citing, “My client and I prefer to fight this out in an actual court of law rather than in the court of public opinion.”
Neither 21st Century Fox nor Fox News responded to Business Insider’s requests for comment or statements.
Cortes is asking for millions of dollars from Fox in damages.
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