Circle City Broadcasting Adds Civil Rights Attorney Cyrus Mehri To Litigation Team

DuJuan McCoy, owner, president and CEO of Circle City Broadcasting, announced today that famed civil rights attorney Cyrus Mehri of Mehri & Skalet (M&S) has joined Mr. McCoy’s litigation team in his race discrimination lawsuits against Dish Network and AT&T/DirecTV.

McCoy’s Circle City Broadcasting acquired Indianapolis television stations WISH and WNDY in 2019 from Nexstar. McCoy, a Black man, alleges that Dish Network and AT&T/DirecTV engaged in racial discrimination when they refused to pay fair market value fees for the same retransmission rights for which they previously paid the prior owners and intentionally treated Circle City worse than those non-Black owned predecessors.

Circle City said Mehri and his firm “have led anti-discrimination projects that have helped curtail unjust and unlawful practices by some of America’s largest corporations. M&S achieved remarkable results on behalf of diversity, equity and inclusion against companies such as Coca-Cola, Texaco Inc., Ford Motor Company, Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, Wells Fargo, John Hancock and Walmart.”

Mehri played a pivotal role in developing the Rooney Rule, a rule used by the NFL to help promote the hiring of minority coaches, which many companies have since adopted. He recently wrote about the Rooney Rule in the Washington Post and spoke about it on New York Time’s The Daily podcast.

“We are extremely pleased to join the Circle City Broadcasting team as co-counsel with Bose McKinney and Evans and Jones, Gillispia and Loyd,” Mehri said. “When you see a highly government-regulated industry like broadcasting have only 1.3% of total commercial TV broadcast stations be Black-owned, that’s already an issue. To then have a rare Black-owned and operated broadcast television company like Circle City Broadcasting be singled out for adverse treatment is grounds for concern about discriminatory conduct. We look forward to contributing our civil rights litigation experience to this formidable team of attorneys.”

McCoy said, “I am honored and grateful that Cyrus Mehri and M&S agreed to join my team. We look forward to their unique approach and wisdom from their successful history in litigating discrimination cases like mine against larger companies like Dish and AT&T/DirecTV.”