The Disney+ streaming service announced its own Pride celebration section where viewers can watch movies, documentaries, and short that focus on LGBTQ+ stories. The lawsuit comes as Disney rolls out LGBTQ-themed content across its corporate properties. Around the same time, according to the filing, his “sexual orientation as a gay man became known to several individuals, including Plaintiff’s direct supervisor, Jim Hedges, the CFO of ABC.” Six years later, he was promoted to vice president of production finance for Touchstone TV. His complaint was closed April 30 and he was given the go-ahead to sue within a year’s time. “Plaintiff is informed and believes that these promotions occurred despite representations that Disney was hurting financially and not promoting.”ĭeadline reported Hopkins filed a complaint of discrimination with California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing in April of this year. “After his sexual orientation became known to his superiors and after being discriminated against and put on a dead-end career track and repeatedly denied promotions with no remedy or relief from HR, Plaintiff is informed and believes that yet again, in or around April 2021, several promotions occurred, but Plaintiff once again was not promoted,” the complaint said, according to Deadline, which obtained a copy of the filing. He is seeking unspecified compensatory damages. Hopkins is currently a vice president of production finance at Disney’s ABC Signature Studios, which is the production division of ABC. He alleges he was also put on a “dead-end career track” and that his compensation “is less than other individuals who are also department heads.” In a ten-page complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Joel Hopkins claims he was denied promotion after his superiors learned about his sexual orientation.