Los Angeles Sparks Accused of Sexual Discrimination in Lawsuit

Penny Toler, the former longtime general manager of the Sparks, is suing the W. N. B. A.

team, which fired her after a profane postgame tirade. Penny Toler, the former general manager of the Los Angeles Sparks, is suing the W. N. B.

A. team, saying she was fired for raising complaints about inappropriate sexual relationships involving the team president and a managing partner, not for using a racial slur. The Sparks fired Toler on Oct. 4, about two weeks after a profane postgame tirade that included a racial slur.

In the suit filed on Tuesday for gender discrimination, Toler said if she were a man, she would still be employed by the team. Toler said her termination had more to do with retaliation “after raising complaints about the workplace conduct” of Christine Simmons, the former team president, and Eric Holoman, the team managing partner and governor, “who were engaged in an extramarital affair” during Simmons’ tenure as team president — a relationship Toler said made doing her job difficult. Toler also stated in the suit that there was a double-standard for male employees, including the team’s former coach from 2015-18 — who was Brian Agler, though the suit doesn’t mention Agler by name. When contacted on Tuesday, Holoman said he was not aware of a lawsuit being filed.

Neither Simmons nor Agler could immediately be reached on Tuesday for comment. Toler, who had been with the franchise as a player or general manager since it was founded in 1997, described a soap-opera like atmosphere in the lawsuit that included sexual relationships between Simmons and a ball boy and the coach and a player. “It looks like she was singled out and treated differently because she was a woman,” Dawn Collins, Toler’s attorney, told The Associated Press, referring to Toler’s postgame comments.

““Coaches speak to their players to get them fired up, many coaches use harsher language and far more controversial language.”

If the term is not O. K. , it’s not O. K.