Suns Keep Getting Sued By Employees, Even After Sale to Ishbia

The Suns were supposed to turn over a new leaf after Mat Ishbia bought the team from embattled ex-owner Robert Sarver for a then-record $4 billion in December 2022. But instead, the team keeps getting sued in federal court over allegations of workplace mismanagement, including racial discrimination, retaliatory firings and sexual harassment—with four suits filed since November of last year.

The most recent is from a former director of security who accuses the franchise of racial discrimination and claims it has serious security deficiencies. 

All of the suits have been filed in Arizona federal court and concern claims that allegedly took place under Ishbia’s leadership. Each of the plaintiffs is represented by the same attorney—Sheree D. Wright of IBF Law Group.

In an email to Front Office Sports, Stacey Mitch, the team’s senior vice president of communications, called the latest allegations “delusional and categorically false.”

Most recently, on May 13, Gene Traylor—the team’s former director of safety, security and risk management who is Black—accused the franchise of ignoring urgent security concerns that he says preceded multiple high-profile incidents, one involving the Suns’ CEO and another which saw former Phoenix Mercury player Britney Griner harassed at an airport. (Ishbia bought the Mercury from Sarver as well.)

Traylor claims that the teams’ arena is “highly vulnerable” and that he tried to alert his superiors. During multiple subsequent field tests undertaken by the Phoenix Police Department’s Homeland Defense, aimed at assessing the safety of public venues, plainclothes officers were able to enter the area with concealed weapons, including knives and handguns, the complaint says.

The complaint says Traylor’s insistence that these deficiencies needed to be addressed were “disregarded” as an attempt to question the authority of his higher ups, “rather than as good-faith efforts to protect the organization and its guests.”

Instead of viewing those, and other, instances as proof that Traylor’s proposed security measures should be implemented, the team initiated a plan to get rid of him, according to the lawsuit. Ultimately, he was demoted, not terminated. Traylor claims his demotion “was not performance-based but rather a direct result of his identity as an educated, accomplished Black professional who is respected in his field—qualities that intimidated Defendant and their leadership.”

Traylor’s suit comes not long after a Hispanic woman, identified in her complaint as Jane Doe, sued the team in April for discrimination, retaliation and a hostile workplace. Before that, a 46-year-old video engineer alleged in March that the team pressured him to change his employment status to contractor and then pushed him into unsanitary working conditions. The first suit of the bunch, lodged last November, came from the Suns’ former head of diversity, equity and inclusion, who alleged that the workplace environment did not improve at all after Sarver sold the team to Ishbia.

“The through line in these lawsuits is the credible, detailed, and independently corroborated testimony of multiple current and former Suns employees—across departments, races, and roles—who allege a culture of racial discrimination, retaliation, hostile work environments, and systemic failures in accountability,” Wright wrote in an email to FOS. 

Additionally, Wright said that others have come forward and she anticipates additional lawsuits once their claims have been properly vetted.

“I’m not the one creating these lawsuits—the Suns’ own internal conduct has brought us here,” she said.

The Suns, however, say Wright is essentially extorting the team with frivolous lawsuits. 

“The Suns will not be extorted and will seek to hold Ms. Wright and her accomplices fully responsible for their actions,” Mitch, the team spokesperson, said. 

As to how the organization has changed since Ishbia took over, Mitch said “there were significant challenges with the culture under the previous ownership. We’re very proud of the work we’ve done to create a new culture under the leadership of Mat Ishbia.”

Mitch also noted that Wright has been disciplined by the Supreme Court of Arizona two times for “committing numerous violations of the rules of professional conduct, and she is currently serving a two-year probation with the State Bar of Arizona.”

Wright defended her record, telling FOS that while it’s true she entered into a stipulated agreement, the Suns are misrepresenting the matter in order to smear her.

The terms of her probation, which are available on the State Bar of Arizona website, show that she was disciplined for offenses such as not submitting a timely court-ordered document, responding to a client’s request for information too slowly and failing to keep them “adequately appraised,” and failing to “withdraw properly from the representation.” Under the terms of the probation, Wright was required to pay the state bar’s costs and expenses, which amounted to a little more than $1,511.

“When organizations are unable to disprove the truth, they often attack the truth-teller,” Wright said. “That is exactly what’s happening here. Instead of defending themselves on the merits, the Suns have chosen to publicly smear a Black woman attorney while ignoring the voices of the people who were actually harmed. They’ve already attempted to settle these cases privately, so their public denials ring hollow.”

Sarver sold the Suns following a one-year suspension and $10 million fine he received after an investigation conducted by law firm Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, which found he “engaged in conduct that clearly violated common workplace standards,” including racist and misogynist behavior.