When an all-white jury deliberated for less than three hours to dismiss her lawsuit against Louisiana State University last month, Sharon Lewis — a Black woman who challenged being unceremoniously fired after 20 years in the university’s athletics department — could only shake her head.
“I never had a shot,” she told NBC News.
Lewis, a former LSU student-athlete, spent two decades there, most recently as the assistant athletic director of football recruiting and alumni relations until her job came to an abrupt end in 2021. Lewis was told she was being let go amid a personnel restructuring. But she said she believes she lost her job as retaliation for reporting sexual harassment that she and other female colleagues have said they experienced at the hands of a high-profile coach.
Going into the trial, Lewis, 56, said she knew her odds were slim: a Black woman in Louisiana taking on the state’s flagship university — and its powerhouse athletics department. But she sued the school anyway in U.S. District Court in Baton Rouge, seeking $6.3 million in compensatory damages and another $300,000 for emotional damages for wrongful termination.
Separately, a $50 million federal racketeering lawsuit she brought was dismissed by a federal judge, and earlier this month, Lewis and her attorney, Larry English, were ordered to pay $200,000 to former LSU head football coach Les Miles for fabricating claims that the college athletics department was being run as a criminal operation.
Lewis and English are now appealing that order.
Ultimately, they said, themes of race, gender and the power of an influential college football program converged to protect some of LSU’s administrative leaders and sports stars.
For years, according to an independent investigation into the university’s athletics department, Lewis had reported several sexual harassment, misconduct and assault complaints that she, female students and other women in the athletics department said they…
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