Los Angeles Sparks ahead Dearica Hamby filed a federal lawsuit Monday in opposition to the WNBA and the Las Vegas Aces alleging her former workforce and head coach Becky Hammon withheld agreed-upon advantages and questioned her dedication to the workforce after studying Hamby was pregnant.
Hamby, a multiple-time all-star who received a championship with the Aces in 2022, signed a multi-year contract extension with the workforce that June. The lawsuit says the Aces promised Hamby “sure advantages and inducements outdoors of the contract,” together with masking personal faculty tuition for her younger daughter Amaya and offering housing lodging for Hamby’s household.
Hamby found she was pregnant the subsequent month, the lawsuit continues. Hamby alleges within the swimsuit that, when she advised Hammon and Aces administration after which publicly introduced her being pregnant throughout the championship parade that September, there have been modifications in the best way she was handled – together with being ordered to vacate the team-provided housing and the workforce backpedaling on the schooling funds.
Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances through Getty Pictures
The swimsuit additionally particulars a telephone dialog in January 2023 during which, it alleges, Hammon known as her a “query mark,” accused her of signing her contract understanding she was pregnant and telling her she hadn’t held up her finish of the discount.
The day of the alleged telephone name, Hamby wrote in a social media put up, “Think about expressing your fears as a girl and being pregnant on this career/world…. Then to be reassured that you simply have been supported.. and your again was “had”…. solely to then be used in opposition to you. Lmao”
Shortly afterward, Hamby was traded to the Sparks. She continued to talk out on social media, asking “Did the workforce count on me to vow to not get pregnant in trade for the contract extension?”
Following an official WNBA investigation, the Aces misplaced their first spherical draft decide for 2025 over “impermissible participant advantages” and Hammon was suspended for 2 video games for violating the workforce’s and league’s “respect within the office insurance policies.”
Hamby asserts that the WNBA did not impose ample punishment on the Aces or Hammon and that the workforce retaliated in opposition to her after she went public within the social media put up along with her claims of discrimination.
After her son Legend was born in March of 2023, Hamby performed all 40 video games for the Sparks. This season, she was chosen as an all-star for the third time and received a bronze medal in ladies’s 3×3 basketball at the Paris Olympics. Â
