Discrimination lawsuit and investigation dropped against Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

After former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Alexis Johnson said she was removed from covering Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, she filed a discrimination lawsuit claiming her former employer violated her civil rights. Now, she is dropping the case.

Johnson, who is Black, requested to drop her lawsuit in March. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan signed an order to formally dismiss the case.

A lawyer for Johnson said the case was dropped over a technicality involving automatically deleted text messages, while counsel for the Post-Gazette said the case being dropped showed Johnson’s allegations lacked merit.

In May 2020, Johnson tweeted a mocking post comparing prior messes made outside of Kenny Chesney concerts in Pittsburgh with property damage and looting that happened following protests over the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by Minneapolis police in 2020. Johnson said back then that Post-Gazette management met with her shortly after her tweet was posted and said she couldn’t cover Black Lives Matter protests.

Related:

• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter sues newspaper over protest coverage ban
• Post-Gazette files lawsuit claiming Pittsburgh's discrimination inquiry is 'unconstitutional'

In June 2020, Johnson filed a lawsuit against the Post-Gazette, claiming racial discrimination and illegal retaliation. According to court filings, Johnson said there was an ongoing ban against her covering Black Lives Matter, while the Post-Gazette claimed management merely rejected Johnson’s Black Lives Matter pitches.

The Post-Gazette attempted to have the case dismissed in 2021 on grounds that the First Amendment protects newsrooms, and that action related to Johnson was an editorial decision, not a workplace decision.

However, with the case dropped, that argument will not play out in court.

Johnson’s lawyer Sam Cordes said the decision to drop the case was in response to a discovery request where Post-Gazette lawyers asked for text messages from 2020 between Johnson and union representatives. Cordes said Johnson’s iPhone automatically deleted those texts and that the cost of re-creating them would have been prohibitively expensive.

In a court filing, Post-Gazette lawyer Bob Corn-Revere argued this appeared to “present a serious problem of spoliation,” and that Johnson was required to preserve documentation of all communication from the time she filed the lawsuit on June 14, 2020.

In addition to Johnson’s lawsuit being dropped, the Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations withdrew its investigation into allegations of racial bias against the Post-Gazette in relation to Johnson’s case. The Post-Gazette had sued the commission, claiming its investigation was unconstitutional, but both sides settled to dismiss their cases with each side paying its own costs.

“We are gratified that both Alexis Johnson’s civil suit and the PCHR investigation were terminated with prejudice,” Corn-Revere said in an email. “It had become increasingly clear through discovery that allegations of discrimination against the Post-Gazette lacked any merit, and should have been dismissed long ago.”

Johnson, a Penn Hills native who is now a reporter at Vice News, said she was disappointed that the suit didn’t advance to trial where the jury would have weighed in to determine its merit. However, she said she is ready to leave the case behind her.

“I am ready to move on. It is a shame that it ended this way,” she said Wednesday. “I knew I was in for a fight. It was never about the money, it was all about defending myself.”