Former Six Flags Employee Sues Park for $25 Million Over Racial Discrimination

Charles Winters worked at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California for nearly three years. He says what he witnessed and experienced during that time adds up to something the park needs to answer for in court.

Winters, who is African American, filed a civil complaint against the park and its parent company Six Flags Entertainment Corporation on July 2 in Los Angeles Superior Court. The lawsuit seeks $25 million and alleges racial discrimination, wrongful termination, and defamation. Six Flags says it doesn't comment on pending litigation.

What He Says Happened on the Job

Winters worked as a food service team member from November 2022 until July 2025. His complaint lays out a specific and consistent pattern he says he experienced throughout his time there.

He alleges that during downtime, Black employees were regularly assigned to get on their hands and knees to clean floors, refrigerators, and other surfaces — while White coworkers were given the easier job of standing at the register waiting for customers. He claims this wasn't occasional but routine.

He also alleges the park had a "distinct preference for non-African American employees" that showed up in turnover numbers. Over the course of three years, he says he watched 20 to 30 Black employees get hired and quickly fired — a pattern he claims didn't apply to non-Black workers.

In December 2024 Winters says he found out about a Christmas party through a notice on an employee bulletin board — one he and his Black coworkers had not been invited to. When he asked a supervisor about it, he was told the party had been cancelled. He later learned from a coworker it went ahead anyway.

By January 2025 he says the situation shifted to micromanagement. Black employees, he alleges, were pushed to upsell souvenirs and threatened with disciplinary action if they didn't — pressure he says wasn't applied equally to non-Black staff.

The Night That Led to His Firing

The incident that Winters says ended his career at Six Flags happened on June 21, 2025. He stayed about an hour after the park closed and was leaving through the employee wardrobe department — wearing his employee badge visibly around his neck.

He claims a White security guard stopped him and subjected him to an intense line of questioning about why he was there. When the confrontation escalated, the guard requested Sheriff's deputies be called. Deputies arrived, checked his badge, and told him he was free to go.

Winters reported the incident to HR. He was then suspended without pay while the park investigated. On July 3 he returned to work and was terminated — told he had allegedly failed to cooperate with security and failed to show his badge. He disputes both claims entirely and alleges management knew he had done nothing wrong but fired him anyway and spread false statements about the incident to other managers, HR personnel, and employees.

The Legal Landscape Behind the Claims

California has some of the strongest workplace anti-discrimination protections in the country under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and national origin. A claim doesn't require a single dramatic incident — courts have long recognized that a pattern of differential treatment, micromanagement, exclusion from workplace events, and disproportionate discipline can collectively constitute a hostile work environment even when each individual act might seem minor in isolation.

Winters' attorneys will likely lean on the cumulative pattern — the cleaning assignments, the Christmas party exclusion, the upselling pressure, the security confrontation, and the termination — to argue that no single incident should be viewed separately from the larger context of how Black employees were treated during his time there.

The defamation claim adds another layer. For that to succeed, Winters would need to show that the false statements made about him during and after the security incident were communicated to third parties, that those statements were untrue, and that they caused him damage — specifically his termination and reputational harm.

The $25 million figure breaks down into five separate $5 million claims covering general damages, special damages, consequential damages, economic losses, and emotional distress. Whether a jury agrees the facts support that number is what a trial would determine.

No trial date has been set. Six Flags hasn't commented. The case is just getting started.

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