Umpire Ángel Hernández Loses Appeal of Discrimination Lawsuit vs. MLB

The veteran umpire originally sued the league in 2017.

Ángel Hernández suffered another loss Tuesday in his racial discrimination lawsuit against Major League Baseball, as a federal court denied reinstatement of his case.

Hernández, the Cuban-born, veteran umpire, initially sued MLB in 2017, claiming the league is biased against minority umpires when deciding upon high-profile positions. At the time, he argued he had not worked in a World Series since ’05 and had been passed over for crew chief several times.

MLB promoted its first Black crew chief, Kerwin Danley, and first Latino crew chief born outside the U.S., Alfonso Márquez, both in 2020.

In 2021, Hernández lost his original lawsuit against MLB, but he appealed the decision. On Tuesday, 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judges Susan L. Carney and Steven J. Menashi denied his appeal. According to the court, Circuit Judge Rosemary S. Pooler, the third member of the panel, died last week.

“Hernández has failed to establish a statistically significant disparity between the promotion rates of white and minority umpires,” the 11-page decision read, via the Associated Press. “MLB has provided persuasive expert evidence demonstrating that, during the years at issue, the difference in crew chief promotion rates between white and minority umpires was not statistically significant. Hernández offers no explanation as to why MLB’s statistical evidence is unreliable.”

Hernández also argued that Joe Torre, MLB’s chief baseball officer from 2011 to ’20, was hostile toward him from when Torre managed the Yankees.

“Hernández has failed to show that the criteria Torre used in making crew chief promotion decisions caused the existing disparity between white and minority crew chiefs,” the court said, via the AP. “Hernández has made no showing that Torre harbors a bias against racial minorities.”