by Mikeie Honda Reiland, Nashville Banner
January 5, 2026
On Dec. 29, former NewsChannel 5 meteorologist Bree Smith filed a lawsuit in federal court against her ex-employers. She alleged sexist verbal abuse from a coworker and physical objectification as well as retaliation from higher-ups and a hostile work environment after she spoke up.
NewsChannel 5 denied the allegations in a statement provided to the Banner.
Smith began working at NewsChannel 5 (WTVF-TV) in January 2016 after five years as a meteorologist in St. Louis. According to the filing, she quickly earned a leadership role within the weather team, co-writing the team’s staffing schedule.
A year after she started at the channel, in January 2017, Smith alleged that fellow meteorologist Henry Rothenberg told her, “You only got the job because of your tits.” Smith reported the comment to her manager, who allegedly did not take action, saying she “just needed a warm body in the building,” referring to Rothenberg.
According to the suit, Smith reported Rothenberg to human resources for the first time in 2019 after he told coworkers, “I won’t hit a woman, but I will hit a bitch.” Allegedly, after management spoke with Rothenberg, he tried to determine who had reported him, hinting that he might retaliate.
After that incident, the lawsuit said, Rothenberg called a coworker a “bimbo” on a hot microphone in 2022. By then, Smith managed a five-person weather team. She alleged that Rothenberg repeatedly interrupted and undermined her during team meetings. Smith again complained to HR, saying that Rothenberg often failed to complete his daily tasks, often pushing them onto Smith’s plate.
In 2023, the lawsuit said, a male colleague slept through an evening broadcast, after which other men on the weather team began to show up late and skip their shifts. During the 2020 tornado, the lawsuit alleged that Rothenberg went missing for two days while the rest of the team worked, and that, in 2023, because Rothenberg was crying on the floor during a severe weather broadcast, Smith had to fill in using only her phone while on a family vacation.
Smith also alleged that Rothenberg once told management that his father was dying in order to miss work — then sent the team a picture of himself and his father drinking whiskey on a couch. Smith also said that when she tested positive for COVID in 2021, she was asked to broadcast from her basement, while Rothenberg, who was also sick with COVID at the time, didn’t have to work.
Beyond Rothenberg’s alleged actions, Smith took issue with the broader culture at the Scripps-owned station. The women at the station, Smith said, were required to wear false eyelashes and take shopping trips with a style consultant who criticized their bodies. At one point, the lawsuit alleged, Smith requested a $600 air filter for the studio to help with her asthma, but the station declined to purchase it despite being in the middle of a building renovation.
In the summer of 2022, management hired an investigator to handle claims made by Smith and a coworker about Rothenberg. Smith later learned that the investigator, Katie Ford, was a company employee. Smith said that after the investigation, she was told that her “complacency” in reporting Rothenberg led to an inability to punish him beyond a disciplinary letter.
“All of us have to open our minds to the idea that maybe we get a changed man,” General Manager Lyn Plantinga allegedly told Smith, speaking of Rothenberg.
After the investigation, Smith alleged that she received increased scrutiny and retaliation from management. She said she no longer co-wrote the team’s schedule and was required to submit a detailed agenda and summary of her community engagement work each Friday. During the same period, Rothenberg was appointed to lead the station’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts.
In October 2024, Smith began receiving emails with “deepfakes” — sexually explicit images altered to include her face. She tried to get the station to take legal action. According to the lawsuit, a manager told her that the images weren’t recognizable as Smith, and responded by saying, “Sometimes, when we get to a place where we’re already emotional about 50 other things, things maybe seem bigger than they are.”
Smith recently provided public support for a statehouse bill to make creating these types of images a felony. She resigned from the station in January 2025.
“We strongly disagree with the characterizations brought by Bree Smith’s legal team and plan to aggressively defend ourselves,” Becca McCarter, senior director of external communications at NewsChannel 5, told the Banner in a statement. “Prior to her abrupt departure, we were actively working with Bree to continue her tenure with our award-winning team at NewsChannel 5. We were disappointed that those negotiations were not successful.
“The leadership of NewsChannel 5 and our parent company, Scripps, work hard to create a positive work environment for our employees. We take very seriously any claims of mistreatment and address them promptly. Any concerns brought to us by Bree were investigated thoroughly. It is unfortunate that we must now address these matters publicly. The facts will show the station took appropriate action and Bree’s lawsuit against the station is without merit.”
According to the lawsuit, Smith has experienced stress, anxiety, depression, illness, a loss of income and damage to her professional reputation. She seeks a jury trial and punitive damages from NewsChannel 5.
Editor’s note: The Nashville Banner is a content partner of NewsChannel 5. No one from Scripps or NewsChannel 5 saw this story prior to publication.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
