Byron Allen’s $10 billion lawsuit against McDonald’s, accusing the fast food giant of discriminating against Black-owned media companies, is headed to trial.
U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin ruled that there was sufficient evidence to take McDonald’s to trial over allegations that the fast food giant violated civil rights laws by placing Byron Allen’s media networks in lower advertising tiers, typically reserved for content targeted to Black audiences. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Olguin noted it was a “close call,” but evidence suggests that Allen’s companies, Entertainment Studios and The Weather Channel, were excluded from McDonald’s larger general market budget, allowing the case to proceed to a jury.
Allen believes there is “overwhelming evidence” of discrimination by McDonald’s.
“It is time for the McDonald’s Board of Directors, stockholders, and civil rights organizations nationwide to call for the resignation of CEO Chris Kempczinski, who was caught sending racist text messages about Black and Hispanic people,” he said of the case going to trial.
McDonald’s has since responded with a statement welcoming the trial on a discrimination lawsuit they cite as “utterly baseless.” The fast food giant believes the trial only shows “that neither party met the high standard for dismissal.”
“We are prepared to show that this case is utterly baseless,” it added. “McDonald’s invested in media properties that aligned with the company’s business strategy and, like any other rational business, declined to invest in those that had low ratings or failed to reach the company’s target audiences.”
The alleged racist text messages Allen referenced in his statement were from 2021 when Kempczinski messaged Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, where the McDonald’s CEO blamed the death of two Black and Latino children on their parents. One of the children, Jaslyn Adams, was shot and killed sitting in a car with her father in a McDonald’s parking lot.
“The parents failed those kids, which I know is something you can’t say,” he wrote. “Even harder to fix.”
In his lawsuit, Allen accuses McDonald’s of using a multi-tiered advertising strategy in which its general market tier, managed by OMD Worldwide, allocates funds primarily to white-owned media companies. Meanwhile, a separate, smaller budget—allegedly overseen by a different ad agency, Burrell, is reserved for companies producing content for Black audiences.
The lawsuit claims that Entertainment Studios and The Weather Channel, owned by Allen, were unfairly placed in this limited tier because of his ownership. A Nov. 30 ruling found that, among other things, McDonald’s may have blocked Allen’s channels from serious consideration by OMD, its general ad agency.
Now a jury will determine whether McDonald’s had valid, nondiscriminatory reasons for exclusively assigning Burrell to handle advertising for The Weather Channel and Entertainment Studios, or if it was done in a discriminative form. In its defense, McDonald’s argues that Allen’s networks lack broad appeal across all racial demographics for general market advertising and were not Nielsen-rated until 2017.
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