Tepper Sports is ‘broken’ and favors women, former Charlotte FC employee alleges
The first person hired by Charlotte FC has filed a discrimination lawsuit against the soccer team and its parent company, Tepper Sports and Entertainment, claiming he was wrongfully fired for an email that offered Bank of America Stadium suite seats to a family as a goodwill gesture.
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Meanwhile, Dustin Swinehart alleges, women were not reprimanded for using racial slurs or being publicly intoxicated and “rude.”
Swinehart, a former professional soccer player and Charlotte FC’s original director of community engagement, said in his lawsuit that the Tepper company set its sights on being a “trailblazer for women in sports” but violated N.C. and federal law by fostering “an uneven gender landscape” with “disparate standards for women and men in hiring, promotions, and terminations.”
“Sadly, it’s a broken place right now,” Swinehart said in a Friday interview with The Charlotte Observer. “But I also believe that organizations don’t get healthier and stronger unless people say honest things.”
Tepper Sports and Entertainment communications director Sarah Clark declined to comment Friday on pending litigation.
Swinehart’s claims center mostly around an Aug. 7, 2024, incident where a set of twin boys left a Charlotte FC youth soccer camp hours before they were supposed to and were found “walking down the street alone.”
The boys were ultimately safe, and their father “was primarily apologetic for his sons walking off,” according to the lawsuit. It was the twins’ fourth day at the camp, and they had always stayed the whole day. Swinehart, in the lawsuit filed by attorney Joshua Van Kampen, says it is unclear what led them to leave the camp with the half-day crowd.
A “high-level Zoom meeting” came the next day.
Charlotte FC leaders, including Swinehart, discussed new safety protocols. One employee took responsibility for not catching the boys’ early and unapproved departure. Employees decided that the family would get a refund. Kisha Smith, Tepper Sports and Entertainment’s chief human resource officer, said there should be no written communication with the family.
During a later meeting with his direct boss, Swinehart — who said he was not present when the boys left the camp — shared the idea of offering the boys and their family seats in a luxury suite for a Charlotte FC match. His boss agreed, according to the lawsuit, so Swinehart asked an employee who worked under him to figure out if the family would be interested in that.
That employee emailed the boys’ father to confirm he had been refunded for the camp and ask if he would be interested in suite seats.
“This is incredibly kind and totally unnecessary,” the father responded on Aug. 13, 2024, “but I am not one to pass up an opportunity to be in the suite.”
The same day, Smith, who had said during the Zoom call that the family should not be contacted in writing, called Swinehart.
“Without so much as a hello [she] aggressively interrogated him about why an email had gone out to the family,” the lawsuit states.
On Aug. 14, 2024, one of Smith’s direct reports fired Swinehart “because of the email” — an email he didn’t send.
Swinehart was “blindsided,” the lawsuit filed in Mecklenburg Superior Court says.
Swinehart, 52, played for the United Soccer League’s Charlotte Eagles for 12 years and is in the league’s Hall of Fame as an all-time leading scorer. He has lived in Charlotte for 28 years.
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He left his role as founder of Project 658, a nonprofit that provides sustainable, holistic care to refugees resettling in the Charlotte area, to join Charlotte FC. He was its “first hire,” he said, and he was the only employee for a month in 2020, two years before the club launched. As director of community engagement, he helped with “building a football club from the ground up,” chose where its headquarters and training grounds would be and “was never disciplined or placed on a performance improvement plan.”
In an interview with The Charlotte Observer Friday afternoon, Swinehart said he is telling his story now “so that other people don’t have to go through what I’ve gone through.”
“Honestly, I really really do want Tepper Sports to be a better place,” he said. “I am a deep believer in the power and platform of sports … I think Charlotte’s better if Tepper Sports is as strong and as healthy as it can be.”
Swinehart’s lawsuit does not say he is seeking any money for the claims, and he told the Observer he primarily wants to see change.
Van Kampen, his attorney, told the Observer “the organization had ample opportunity to make peace and did not.” He also volunteered that he and Swinehart are “not of the ilk that attack companies that have DEI programs” and that he “detests companies that drop their DEI programs.”
Most of the time, Van Kampen said, he’s representing women in discrimination lawsuits.
“There are some employers that can take it to the extreme, where there’s just a glaring disparate and preferential treatment toward women, and that requires action in court,” he said.
Swinehart alleges that Smith, who fired him, was “condescending, derisive, and rude” and that her behavior “would have been grounds for discipline, especially for a [chief human resource officer] — a position that is supposed to be the gold standard for promoting civility, culture, and professionalism.”
Her close relationship with Nicole Tepper, founder and owner of Tepper Sports and Entertainment, and CEO Kristi Coleman allowed her to “act as an untouchable,” and she acted more as the final decision maker than a counselor, the lawsuit alleges.
Smith also “engaged in gross misconduct by pressuring personnel to lie to the media” in 2023 after CBS Sports reported that the Carolina Panthers violated NFL rules. Nicole Tepper had not completed mandatory inclusive hiring training before participating in interviews for potential head coaches for the Panthers, the CBS Sports article reported.
That was correct, Swinehart said, but Smith told staff to release a statement saying Smith herself had trained Nicole Tepper.
Smith was not authorized to do such training, Swinehart alleges.
Swinehart also said in his lawsuit that an unnamed woman on the community relations team had “multiple instances of rank public intoxication” during a golf charity event and a Super Bowl, but was never disciplined.
He also said another unnamed woman publicly used racial slurs, made a racist joke about an African American and used derogatory language toward Mexican food.
The woman was given a warning but later promoted, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also says Nicole Tepper had a plan to have the Carolina Panthers be the first to hire a female team president and that she also wanted to hire the NFL’s first female play-by-play announcer.
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The play-by-play job ultimately went to Anish Shroff, a man, instead.
