More than a dozen former MLB scouts filed a lawsuit against the league, its teams and commissioner Rob Manfred, saying they were discriminated against because of their age.
In total, 17 people filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Denver, citing the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 along with laws in 11 states and New York City.
The scouts’ ages range from 55 to 71, saying the league and its teams “acted to prevent the reemployment of older scouts or refused the reemployment of older scouts” from 2020 to 2022.
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The ex-scouts also allege MLB in 2015 ended a listing of scouts eligible for employment, the decision to end the MLB Scouting Bureau in 2018 was discriminatory and MLB used analytics and the coronavirus pandemic as pretexts to eliminate older scouts.
They also say an MLB provision that offsets scouts’ salaries when they sign with a new team — but are still being paid by a previous team from which they’ve been fired — is discriminatory.
“This lawsuit is about age discrimination within a sport that supposedly values history, tradition and putting the best possible product on the field,” lawyer Mitchell C. Abeita of Kilgore & Kilgore said in a statement.
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MLB said in a statement it looks “forward to refuting these claims in court,” but it does not comment on pending litigation.
Former Chicago Cubs scout James S. Benedict is leading the charge – he was fired by the Cubs in 2020, and they seek class-action certification.
Benedict played minor league baseball and was a college pitching coach before becoming a scout for the Texas Rangers in 1990. He also had roles with the Montreal Expos, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, Cleveland, Pittsburgh Pirates and Miami Marlins. He was most recently the Cubs’ special assistant to baseball operations.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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