Former 49ers employees, Anthony Lozano and Keith Yanagi, filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that owner Jed York fired them as well as “a lot” of other older employees in an attempt to rebrand the team as a “startup” before its move to the new stadium in Silicon Valley.
According to the court documents, York replaced those older employees with younger workers from tech companies in Santa Clara because they “made a lot of money, they did a lot of cool things before they were 40 years old, and they don’t want to go play golf six days a week.”
The suit alleges that because the team let go a group of older employees within a short-time frame, it violated federal regulations banning age discrimination. In addition, other than informing that the team was “going in a different direction,” York did not give either Lozano or Yanagi any further explanation on why they were fired, the filing stated.
Lozano, 56, worked for more than 22 years as the team’s facilities manager and was named an “employee of the month” in 2010.
Yanagi, 59, started as a video assistant in 1987 and worked his way up to be a director of video operations in 2004. According to the court documents, he also received positive performance reviews throughout his 25 years with the organization.