By Aaron Miller-
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is facing legal action over her decision to only accept media interviews with people of colour.
Lightfoot may have found herself in hot water after being sued by a reporter from right-wing news site The Daily Caller, who claims that her office’s refusal to grant him a one-on-one interview amounted to racial discrimination.
Thomas Catenacci rightfully claims that denying interviews with white journalists like himself violates the Fourteenth Amendment clause that guarantees all US citizens ‘equal protection under the law’. Catenacci also argues that rejecting his interview requests represents a violation of the First Amendment clause mandating a constitutional freedom of the press.
legal documents obtained by TMZ, lawyers for Catenacci claim that the Daily Caller journalist sent three emails requesting a one-on-one interview with Lightfoot, but was completely ignored by her office.
According to the documents, Catenacci says that Lightfoot’s team granted at least one other person – a Latina journalist – a one-on-one meeting while continuing to refuse to respond to his requests.
The lawsuit comes a week after Lightfoot audaciously marked the second anniversary of her inauguration as Chicago Mayor by announcing that she would be exclusively offering one-on-one interviews to journalists of colour.
Lightfoot said that she made the decision in reaction to her observation that Chicago’s large male and overwhelmingly white media landscape did not adequately reflect the city’s population. Two-thirds of Chicago residents are people of colour.
Cetenacci sent three emails to Lightfoot’s office asking for an interview beginning on March 20, according to the lawsuit, none of which received a response.
The lawsuit says ‘failing to respond in a timely manner’ to the interview requests was akin to a denial.
While it doesn’t specify whether Lightfoot is being sued for damages, it does include request for a jury trial.
Catenacci was hoping to speak to her about Chicago’s battle against COVID-19 and the vaccination effort in the city.
‘It’s absurd that an elected official believes she can discriminate on the basis of race,’ DCNF Editor-in-Chief Ethan Barton said in the Daily Caller. ‘Mayor Lightfoot’s decision is clearly blocking press freedom through racial discrimination”.
The suit is unusual because it accuses a black woman in a high position of authourity of racial discrimination, whose defence will be the very thing she claims to be protesting against.
As a politician, she is expected to set standards, not break them to make a point, putting herself in the vulnerable position of breaking the law.
Her complaints of institutional racism and an underrepresentation of people of color will be gain more attention due to the legal suit, but the focus of the case will be on whether she has committed an offence. It could threaten her political position at a time when she could have been using it to drive much needed change in Chicago, and even other parts of America through her voice.
The high opportunity of pushing change and achieving role model status for young black girls and women in Chicago has been compromised by her poorly thought stance on an issue that deserved attention, without the risk of blemishing her record.
The legal suit will be watched with close interest.