Judge tosses Roenick's claim that he was fired for being a heterosexual man.

Former National Hockey League analyst, and former NHL player, Jeremy Roenick has suffered a significant setback in his lawsuit against his former employer at NBC. This week a federal judge in New York dismissed part of Roenick's claims against NBC, specifically those related to his gender, and sexual preference.

Roenick was suspended, and effectively fired, from NBC Sports in December of 2019 after comments he made during an appearance on the Spittin Chiclets podcast from Barstool Sports ruffled quite a few feathers at NBC. Specifically it was Roenick's comments about a female coworker, NBC's Kathryn Tappen, that resulted in his termination after Roenick joked about having sex with Tappen and his wife. Roenick attempted to argue that similar comments had been made by employees at NBC, even during official NBC broadcasts, however U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan tossed out those claims on Wednesday.

“Roenick fails to show that his conduct was ‘of comparable seriousness’ to that of Lipinski and Weir,” wrote Cronan as per the Hollywood Reporter. “And a comparison of the two incidents shows that Roenick’s behavior was categorically different. Lipinski and Weir participated in a skit for NBC that included jokes about the term ‘camel toe’ and an ‘[o]ffice romance’ between ‘besties.’ Roenick, on the other hand, used his ‘free time’ outside of his role at NBC to tell the hosts of a Barstool Sports podcast that he ‘jokingly implied’ to fellow vacationers that he had sex simultaneously with his NBC co-worker, [Kathryn] Tappen, and his wife on multiple occasions. … Simply put, neither Lipinski nor Weir joked about having sex with a co-worker. Roenick did.”

Although this is obviously a big loss for the Roenick camp this will not mark the end of his legal battle with NBC Universal Media. Roenick has also sued his former employer for breach of contract and has made claims that his former boss retaliated against him following the incident that led to his suspension, both of which are still on the docket at this time. Fact discovery in this case must be completed no later than September 6th of this year and expert discovery must be completed no later than October 21st of this year, so it may be a few months before we get another update on this case.