{"id":398256,"date":"2026-01-08T21:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T21:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/398256\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T21:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T21:12:10","slug":"ex-employee-sues-ducks-nhl-for-sexual-harassment-and-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/398256\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-employee sues Ducks, NHL for sexual harassment and discrimination"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A former Ducks<\/a> and NHL employee is suing the team and league for discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation that she says occurred during her time working for the defendants from 2022 to 2025.<\/p>\n

Tech worker Rose Harris filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the Southern District of New York in which she claims she \u201cwitnessed and experienced repeated and unchecked sexual harassment, bullying, and discrimination\u201d while working for the Ducks and the NHL.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis included nonconsensual, sexualized touching; near-constant vulgar, sexist, and derogatory comments, including homophobic slurs, discriminatory remarks about sex, women, and LGBTQ+ people; obscene pornography on a colleague\u2019s work computer; and disturbing comments about how Harris and other employees dressed, including that women dressed like \u2018whores,\u2019\u201d the complaint states.<\/p>\n

Ducks parent company OC Sports & Entertainment and NHL senior vice president and chief human resources officer Patrice Distler are also named as co-defendants. <\/p>\n

The Ducks declined to comment for this article. The Times reached out to the NHL and OCSE and did not receive immediate responses.<\/p>\n

Harris is seeking unspecified damages and reasonable attorney fees and other costs and expenses.<\/p>\n

According to the complaint, Harris worked for the Ducks\u2019 IT department from July 2022 to December 2024. During that time, the filing states, two of her male coworkers spread false stories that they had engaged in sexual encounters with her. <\/p>\n

Also, the complaint states, \u201cHarris was repeatedly forced to hear about her colleagues\u2019 alleged sexual relationships and was harassed with increasingly invasive questions about her own sex life and sexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n

It adds: \u201cAll of this was part of the frat house boys club environment the Anaheim Ducks and OCSE fostered in the workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris and other female employees also weren\u2019t given the same entry access to certain parts of team facilities as their male counterparts, the lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n

Harris initially did not report the alleged inappropriate behavior for fear of retaliation, according to the lawsuit, and was called upon by the Ducks and OCSE as a witness after another female employee made a sexual harassment report within the company. It was at that point that Harris reported \u201cthe sexual harassment and discrimination she\u2019d experienced\u201d to human resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cHR did nothing to meaningfully address the harassment or discipline the harassers,\u201d the complaint states, and \u201cthe harassment and discrimination continued.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the filing, Harris then experienced retaliation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis included greatly increased workload and responsibilities, with trainings, meetings, and assignments all beyond her regular scope of duties, and all while her title and compensation remained the same. Ducks HR even told Harris that if she wanted to advance she needed to look elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris accepted a job as an SaaS technologies manager at the NHL offices in New York and started work Jan. 7, 2025. But her employment there lasted less than a month, the lawsuit states, after \u201cOCSE and the Ducks outed her as a sexual harassment victim and an adverse witness in a confidential legal proceeding against a league franchise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NHL and Distler wanted Harris gone but they had no legitimate reason to fire her,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cSo, top executives at the NHL went about manufacturing one.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the filing, \u201cDistler falsely accused Harris of hacking her emails \u2014 a crime \u2014 and fired her on the spot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit also accuses the Ducks, OCSE and the NHL of working \u201cto blacklist Harris from any career in professional sports.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Ducks and NHL employee is suing the team and league for discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2210,233,5292,50524,50519,27899,50525,1739,50523,50517,5,21197,4,50520,50521,2019,50522,50518,445],"class_list":["post-398256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheimducks","tag-colleague","tag-complaint-state","tag-discrimination","tag-distler","tag-ducks","tag-filing-state","tag-harris","tag-hockey","tag-lawsuit","tag-nhl","tag-ocse","tag-other-employee","tag-part","tag-retaliation","tag-sexual-harassment","tag-woman"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115861542899646123","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}