Another high-profile pregnancy discrimination law suit is prepped for another round.
A California appeals court will allow former Price is Right model Brandi Cochran to appeal a lower court’s decision to throw out her $8.5 Million dollar pregnancy discrimination law suit award. (Which was later reduced to $7.7 million)
Cochran had alleged in 2010 that show producers made comment about her pregnancy weight and called it a “bad baby story”, then fired her when she returned from maternity leave after having her baby. (Sadly, one of the twins she was carrying died in child birth.)
After the award, a trial court that threw out the award because right before the jury deliberated Cochran’s case, the California Supreme court in another case changed the standard juries should consider when deciding employment discrimination cases. Instead of finding if discrimination was a “motivating” factor in the firing, juries and judges now have to find if it is “substantial” factor.
Cochrane was awarded a new trial but the producers of the show, Freemantle Media wanted to base the trial on evidence submitted in the initial case. There, the show argued that because producers were switching up the show from the Bob Barker era to the Drew Carey era when the models would interact more with the host and contestants, they were planning to fire Cochran anyway.
They may have been able to win using First Amendment grounds given how the show The Bachelor was able to escape a racial discrimination when a judge in that case found that “casting decisions are part and parcel of the Shows’ creative content.” Also, as The Hollywood Reporter notes, the producers of the NBC show Friends avoided a lawsuit arguing that sexist jokes among male writers was part of the creative process.
But no dice! Cochran will have her retrial and another bite at the apple and chance to convince a new jury that she was fired because of her pregnancy.