Lifestyle

WNBA star Dearica Hamby sues the league and her former team for discrimination

Published

2 years ago

August 13, 2024

WNBA star Dearica Hamby sues the league and her former team for discrimination

Dearica Hamby speaks during a Team USA 3×3 Basketball press conference in Paris in July. The U.S. women’s 3×3 basketball team won bronze at the Olympics last week.

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Fresh off an Olympic bronze medal, basketball star Dearica Hamby has filed a federal lawsuit against the WNBA and her former team, the Las Vegas Aces.

The three-time WNBA All-Star and two-time Sixth Women of the Year winner is accusing the league and her former team of discriminating and retaliating against her while she was pregnant, culminating in her trade to the Los Angeles Sparks in January 2023.

“Defendant’s decision to trade [Hamby] was motivated by [Hamby’s] announcement that she was pregnant after signing her contract extension,” reads the 18-page complaint, filed in U.S. district court in Nevada on Monday.

Hamby’s lawyers allege that being traded caused Hamby harm, including “lost promotional and/or endorsement opportunities, relocation to a more unfavorable tax environment, and the denial of a chance to participate for a back-to-back WNBA championship.”

They are asking for compensatory and punitive damages, “to be determined at trial.”

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The Aces did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did the WNBA, but a spokesperson for the league has told multiple media outlets that officials are “reviewing the complaint.”

Aces coach Becky Hammon has denied Hamby’s allegations in the past, saying in May 2023 that the trade “came down to math and business.”

“We made the decision to move Hamby because we could get three bodies in for her one contract,” Hammon told reporters. “[Her pregnancy] was never an issue, and it was never the reason she was traded. It just wasn’t.”

The WNBA launched a formal investigation into Hamby’s discrimination claims in early 2023 — around the time that her second child was born — and concluded that the Aces had violated league rules “regarding impermissible player benefits.”

It consequently rescinded the Aces’ 2025 first-round draft pick, and also suspended Hammon for two games without pay “for violating league and team Respect in the Workplace policies.”

But this month’s lawsuit argues that the WNBA’s response didn’t go far enough to correct the violation of Hamby’s rights or provide her with any meaningful redress. Her lawyers say the WNBA “had the power to, but did not, rescind the trade.”

“The [WNBA] did not impose adequate punishment or consequences on the [Las Vegas Aces] for the discriminatory treatment experienced by [Hamby] nor for her unlawful trade to the Los Angeles Sparks such that it would deter any future similar conduct,” the complaint says.

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Hamby gave birth to her son, Legend, in March 2023 and reported to training camp for the Sparks the following month. The lawsuit says she did not miss any required time with the team as a result of her pregnancy, and went on to play in all 40 of their regular season games. At the end of the season, the Aces won their second consecutive championship, without her.

Hamby filed a discrimination claim against the WNBA and the Aces with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the fall of 2023, and the federal agency ruled in May 2024 that she had the right to sue.

Hamby’s attorneys — with the national firm HKM Employment Attorneys — said in a statement that the Aces had “exiled” Hamby for becoming pregnant and “the WNBA responded with a light tap on the wrist.”

“Every potential mother in the league is now on notice that childbirth could change their career prospects overnight,” they added. “That can’t be right in one of the most prosperous and dynamic women’s professional sports leagues in America.”

‘You’re trading me because I’m pregnant?’

Hamby has played in the WNBA since 2015, starting with the San Antonio Stars — who began operating as the Las Vegas Aces in 2018. She helped lead the Aces to their first-ever WNBA championship in the fall of 2022.

According to the lawsuit, Hamby signed a two-year contract extension with the team in the spring of 2022, which would have carried her through the 2024 playing season.

To seal the deal, the lawsuit says, the team offered Hamby additional “benefits and inducements” like an agreement to cover private school tuition costs for her daughter and allow her to occupy team-provided housing.

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Less than a month after Hamby signed the contract extension, she discovered she was pregnant again. She told Hammon and other Aces staff during the summer, and publicly announced her pregnancy at their championship victory parade that fall.

Dearica Hamby poses with her daughter Amaya on a basketball court, both wearing purple.

Dearica Hamby poses with her daughter Amaya during a 2022 WNBA championship ring ceremony before the Aces’ game against the Los Angeles Sparks in May 2023.

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Hamby’s lawyers say that once her pregnancy was public, she “experienced notable changes in the way she was treated by Las Vegas Aces staff.”

She couldn’t get a clear answer on when her daughter’s tuition would be paid, and was informed that she had to vacate team-provided housing, according to the suit.

The lawsuit also recounts a January 2023 phone call between Hammon and Hamby in which the coach allegedly questioned her commitment to the team, falsely accused her of signing her contract extension while pregnant and suggested she wasn’t taking her off-season workouts seriously. The lawsuit says Hamby, then seven months pregnant, was “working out regularly as permitted by her medical doctors.”

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Hammon allegedly told Hamby that no one expected her to get pregnant again, “implying that by signing the contract extension, Hamby implicitly agreed she would not get pregnant during the two-year extension period.”

Hamby’s lawyers say she twice asked, “You’re trading me because I’m pregnant?” Hammon allegedly responded, “What do you want me to do?”

According to the lawsuit, Hammon told Hamby the next day that her “time with the Aces is up,” and that she could “pick a place like Los Angeles or Atlanta.” Within a week, the team publicly announced that Hamby had been traded to the Los Angeles Sparks.

Hamby says she was punished after she spoke out

Hamby responded to the trade announcement with a public social media post expressing her gratitude and excitement, but also admitting that she was “heartbroken.”

“Being traded is a part of the business. Being lied to, bullied, manipulated and discriminated against is not,” she wrote, before outlining some of the back and forth over her pregnancy. “The unprofessional and unethical way that I have been treated has been traumatizing. To be treated this way by an organization, BY WOMEN who are mothers, who have claimed to ‘be in these shoes,’ who preach family, chemistry and women’s empowerment is disappointing and leaves me sick to my stomach.”

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Shortly after, the executive director of the Women’s National Basketball Players Association emailed the WNBA’s general counsel on Hamby’s behalf, requesting they open an investigation, which they did.

Dearica Hamby of the Los Angeles Sparks attempts a shot during a May 2024 game in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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The lawsuit alleges that the Aces “engaged in a number of retaliatory acts” against Hamby after she went public with her complaints.

Some of the examples listed including telling players and staff to cease communication with Hamby, refusing to extend her an invitation to attend the White House ceremony celebrating their first championship win, and directing video personnel at a 2023 playoff game not to show Hamby’s daughter on screen despite the fact that she was “a fan favorite.”

The lawsuit says Hamby’s trade resulted in additional tax burdens, loss of sponsorship opportunities, reputational harm and other financial losses, in addition to emotional distress and anxiety.

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Terri Carmichael Jackson, the executive director of the player’s union, reiterated in a statement this week that the 2020 collective bargaining agreement granted parents protections that ensured pregnancy wouldn’t mean the end of their career. Those include paying players their full salary while on maternity leave and providing an annual child care stipend of $5,000.

“Obviously, these protections did not change the nature of this business,” she added. “Any team can trade any player for any legitimate reason or no reason at all. But that reason can never be on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, parental status or pregnancy status.”

Lifestyle

Mundane, magic, maybe both — a new book explores ‘The Writer’s Room’

Published

55 minutes ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Mundane, magic, maybe both — a new book explores ‘The Writer’s Room’

There’s a three-story house in Baltimore that looks a bit imposing. You walk up the stone steps before even getting up to the porch, and then you enter the door and you’re greeted with a glass case of literary awards. It’s The Clifton House, formerly home of Lucille Clifton.

The National Book Award-winning poet lived there with her husband, Fred, starting in 1967 until the bank foreclosed on the house in 1980. Clifton’s daughter, Sidney Clifton, has since revived the house and turned it into a cultural hub, hosting artists, readings, workshops and more. But even during a February visit, in the mid-afternoon with no organized events on, the house feels full.

The corner of Lucille Clifton’s bedroom, where she would wake up and write in the mornings

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Andrew Limbong/NPR

“There’s a presence here,” Clifton House Executive Director Joël Díaz told me. “There’s a presence here that sits at attention.”

Sometimes, rooms where famous writers worked can be places of ineffable magic. Other times, they can just be rooms.

Princeton University Press

Katie da Cunha Lewin is the author of the new book, The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape the Books We Love, which explores the appeal of these rooms. Lewin is a big Virginia Woolf fan, and the very first place Lewin visited working on the book was Monk’s House — Woolf’s summer home in Sussex, England. On the way there, there were dreams of seeing Woolf’s desk, of retracing Woolf’s steps and imagining what her creative process would feel like. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for Lewin — everything interesting was behind glass, she said. Still, in the book Lewin writes about how she took a picture of the room and saved it on her phone, going back to check it and re-check it, “in the hope it would allow me some of its magic.”

Let’s be real, writing is a little boring. Unlike a band on fire in the recording studio, or a painter possessed in their studio, the visual image of a writer sitting at a desk click-clacking away at a keyboard or scribbling on a piece of paper isn’t particularly exciting. And yet, the myth of the writer’s room continues to enrapture us. You can head to Massachusetts to see where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. Or go down to Florida to visit the home of Zora Neale Hurston. Or book a stay at the Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Alabama, where the famous couple lived for a time. But what, exactly, is the draw?

Previously unknown poems show Woolf as a fun aunt. She's pictured above in 1902.

Lewin said in an interview that whenever she was at a book event or an author reading, an audience question about the writer’s writing space came up. And yes, some of this is basic fan-driven curiosity. But also “it started to occur to me that it was a central mystery about writing, as if writing is a magic thing that just happens rather than actually labor,” she said.

In a lot of ways, the book is a debunking of the myths we’re presented about writers in their rooms. She writes about the types of writers who couldn’t lock themselves in an office for hours on end, and instead had to find moments in-between to work on their art. She covers the writers who make a big show of their rooms, as a way to seem more writerly. She writes about writers who have had their homes and rooms preserved, versus the ones whose rooms have been lost to time and new real estate developments. The central argument of the book is that there is no magic formula to writing — that there is no daily to-do list to follow, no just-right office chair to buy in order to become a writer. You just have to write.

Lifestyle

Bruce Johnston Retiring From The Beach Boys After 61 Years

Published

2 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

Bruce Johnston Retiring From The Beach Boys After 61 Years

Bruce Johnston
I’m Riding My Last Wave With The Beach Boys

Published
March 4, 2026
6:28 PM PST

Bruce Johnston is riding off into the California sunset … at least for now.

The Beach Boys legend announced Wednesday he’s stepping away from touring after six decades with the iconic band. The 83-year-old revealed in a statement to Rolling Stone he’s hanging up his touring hat to focus on what he calls part three of his long music career.

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“It’s time for Part Three of my lengthy musical career!” Johnston said. “I can write songs forever, and wait until you hear what’s coming!!! As my major talent beyond singing is songwriting, now is the time to get serious again.”

Johnston famously stepped in for co-founder Brian Wilson in 1965 for live performances, becoming a staple of the Beach Boys’ touring lineup ever since. Now, he says he’s shifting gears toward songwriting and even some speaking engagements … with occasional touring member John Stamos helping him craft what he’ll talk about onstage.

beach boys getty

“I might even sing ‘Disney Girls’ & ‘I Write The Songs!!’” he teased.

But don’t call it a full-on farewell tour just yet. Johnston made it clear he’s not shutting the door completely, saying he’s excited to reunite with the band for special occasions, including their upcoming July 2-4 shows at the Hollywood Bowl as part of the Beach Boys’ 2026 tour. The run celebrates both the 60th anniversary of “Pet Sounds” and America’s 250th birthday.

beach boys getty 3

“This isn’t goodbye, it’s see you soon,” he wrote. “I am forever grateful to be a part of the Beach Boys musical legacy.”

Lifestyle

On the brink of death, a woman is saved by a stranger and his family

Published

13 hours ago

March 4, 2026

Press Room

On the brink of death, a woman is saved by a stranger and his family

In 1982, Jean Muenchrath was injured in a mountaineering accident and on the brink of death when a stranger and his family went out of their way to save her life.

Jean Muenchrath

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Jean Muenchrath

In early May 1982, Jean Muenchrath and her boyfriend set out on a mountaineering trip in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range in California. They had done many backcountry trips in the area before, so the terrain was somewhat familiar to both of them. But after they reached one of the summits, a violent storm swept in. It began to snow heavily, and soon the pair was engulfed in a blizzard, with thunder and lightning reverberating around them.

“Getting struck and killed by lightning was a real possibility since we were the highest thing around for miles and lightning was striking all around us,” Muenchrath said.

To reach safer ground, they decided to abandon their plan of taking a trail back. Instead, using their ice axes, they climbed down the face of the mountain through steep and icy snow chutes.

They were both skilled at this type of descent, but at one particularly difficult part of the route, Muenchrath slipped and tumbled over 100 feet down the rocky mountain face. She barely survived the fall and suffered life-threatening injuries.

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This was before cellular or satellite phones, so calling for help wasn’t an option. The couple was forced to hike through deep snow back to the trailhead. Once they arrived, Muenchrath collapsed in the parking lot. It had been five days since she’d fallen.

”My clothes were bloody. I had multiple fractures in my spine and pelvis, a head injury and gangrene from a deep wound,” Muenchrath said.

Not long after they reached the trailhead parking lot, a car pulled in. A man was driving, with his wife in the passenger seat and their baby in the back. As soon as the man saw Muenchrath’s condition, he ran over to help.

”He gently stroked my head, and he held my face [and] reassured me by saying something like, ‘You’re going to be OK now. I’ll be right back to get you,’” Muenchrath remembered.

For the first time in days, her panic began to lift.

“My unsung hero gave me hope that I’d reach a hospital and I’d survive. He took away my fears.”

Within a few minutes, the man had unpacked his car. His wife agreed to stay back in the parking lot with their baby in order to make room for Muenchrath, her boyfriend and their backpacks.

The man drove them to a nearby town so that the couple could get medical treatment.

“I remember looking into the eyes of my unsung hero as he carried me into the emergency room in Lone Pine, California. I was so weak, I couldn’t find the words to express the gratitude I felt in my heart.”

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The gratitude she felt that day only grew. Now, nearly 45 years later, she still thinks about the man and his family.

”He gave me the gift of allowing me to live my life and my dreams,” Muenchrath said.

At some point along the way, the man gave Muenchrath his contact information. But in the chaos of the day, she lost it and has never been able to find him.

”If I knew where my unsung hero was today, I would fly across the country to meet him again. I’d hug him, buy him a meal and tell him how much he continues to mean to me by saving my life. Wherever you are, I say thank you from the depths of my being.”

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.