Jeff Vaughn, ex-Detroit TV anchor, sues LA station alleging 'anti-white' discrimination

A former Detroit TV reporter and anchor has filed a lawsuit alleging he was fired from a Los Angeles TV station group because he is an older, white, straight man.

Jeff Vaughn, 58, who was an anchor for KCAL and KCBS for eight years, alleges in the suit that in 2023 he was removed and replaced by "a younger minority news anchor because he was an experienced, older white, heterosexual, male."

The suit, filed in California federal court, claims the CBS-owned station group didn’t give him a reason for his firing. It points to CBS efforts to increase diversity.

In metro Detroit, Vaughn is best known for stints at two Motor City stations. He worked at Detroit’s Local 4 News as a reporter and anchor from 1999-2007. In 2013, he returned to Detroit to anchor the 5 p.m. news for WXYZ with then-7 Action News veteran JoAnne Purtan and report on business and the auto industry. His tenure at WXYZ lasted until 2015, when he joined KCAL and KCBS.

Vaughn is represented by a conservative nonprofit group called America First Legal, which is known for targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The legal group was founded by Stephen Miller, who was a senior policy adviser to former President Donald Trump. According to a March 2024 article by the New York Times, it has filed “more than a hundred lawsuits, (Equal Employment Opportunity) complaints, amicus briefs and other legal demands.”

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Among America First Legal’s actions are EEOC complaints “asserting that ‘woke corporations’ like Disney, Nike, Mattel, Hershey, United Airlines and the National Football League discriminate against white males” and “amicus briefs to protect Florida minors from drag shows and former President Donald J. Trump from a federal jury trial.”

Vaughn's lawsuit also mentions another former Detroit anchor, Chauncy Glover, who was hired by the CBS station group in 2023. Reports Variety, which linked to the actual case: “The suit contends that Glover — who is Black — had 'minimal’ experience, though Glover has worked in TV news since graduating from college in 2007.”

Glover joined KCAL and KCBS from Houston's KRTK, where he spent eight years as an anchor in Houston. In Detroit, Glover was at WDIV from 2011-14 and covered stories that included the Sandy Hook shooting. While in Detroit, he started the Chauncy Glover Project to provide mentoring to young men in education, college readiness and self-empowerment.

According to his KCAL biography, Glover formed the nonprofit after being “sent on breaking news to a school where two students had been shot by a coach after they tried to rob him” and witnessing one of the young men die.

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.