What It's Like to Be Targeted by Joe Rogan

When Röbynn Europe received a Google alert that someone in the media had mentioned her last month, it wasn’t her first rodeo. After she won a racial and gender discrimination lawsuit against former employer, the mega-gym Equinox, in 2023, she grew accustomed to “every jackass with a YouTube channel” registering their ill-informed take about the case. But this time, it wasn’t any old jackass chiming in. It was the most popular podcaster in the world—and his good friend Tom Segura:

Rogan: Did you hear about that lady that got fired from Equinox in Manhattan? She was late 47 times in 10 months and she sued because of rac—she said she got fired for racism and she won. 

Segura: She won? 

Rogan: It's a jury and she won $11 million. 

Segura: No. She was late 47 times? 

Rogan: Not only that, you work at Equinox, you could work for all of time and you’ll never make $11 million. You’re not gonna make $11 million working at Equinox. But yet you won—and she only  worked there for 10 months. She was late 47 times in 10 months. 

Segura: And that's why they were firing her? Like they're like, "You're just perpetually late."

Rogan: They’re like, “Bitch, you are always late." And then she's like "That's so racist.” 

Segura: That's crazy. 

Rogan: And she won! And she took them to court and won. 

Segura: They're definitely going to appeal that shit.

Rogan: But the thing is when you have a jury, you have a jury of people so fucking stupid they don't get out of jury duty. And they might be like "Yeah, fuck Equinox man, fuck the man, man." 

Segura: Because that guy's just too lazy to go to the gym. He's just like "Fuck it."

Rogan: Of course. Not just that, it's a corporation, you don't think of it as an individual. This is a company that's gonna fuck you over. That's why people don't feel bad stealing from work.

Europe, who worked at Equinox as a personal training manager and is now pursuing a doctorate in physical therapy, told me that Rogan and Segura got just about everything wrong about her case. As an Equinox director testified in a deposition, for instance, Equinox managers were not hourly employees and had no set time to begin or end their shifts. Her lawsuit detailed a vast range of racial discrimination, including jokes about slavery and the company's failure to investigate racist incidents that she reported—with a vice president falsely claiming at trial that she never reported any such incidents at all.

After four years of litigation, a mostly white jury unanimously found that Equinox indeed violated Europe's civil rights. (In a statement about the verdict, Equinox said it vehemently disagreed with the jury's finding and does not tolerate discrimination in any form.) While that initial $11 million verdict was far from the sum she ended up getting, it’s also pocket change for an $8 billion company. More importantly, she noted, it's `an exceedingly reasonable price for bigotry and dehumanization.

So when Rogan and Segura laid into Europe last month, they weren’t just spreading misinformation about a case that wrapped up two years ago. They were targeting a normal person trying to live a normal life after suffering extensive discrimination at the hands of a massive corporation. I spoke with Europe about her experience listening to the segment, what it felt like being turned into fodder for the culture wars, and what her life has been like since the lawsuit concluded. 

What did Rogan and Segura get wrong about your case?

Everything? Much of what they got wrong was sensationalizing an inflammatory headline, neglecting to mention the documented discrimination I and Black members of my staff experienced while employed by Equinox. 

What went through your head while you were listening to the segment? While you were reading the comments?

I was disgusted. Learning that people smiled in my face every day, thanked me for my good work, and praised my performance—I never had a poor employment evaluation at Equinox—but saw no issue comparing me to property was devastating. It was 10 months of being dehumanized and harassed while I tried to keep my health insurance and pay my rent. I did good work, and I was still subhuman to those people. To survive that and have a jury validate my experience was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life… only to realize that no matter what I went through, no matter how much evidence there was, no matter how many years it took, I am still just a lazy Black woman who pulled the race card to a lot of people.

I didn't even get $11 million. That's the hilarious footnote to this whole shit. No one gets the full jury award, or even close—Google remittitur, if you're interested. The white Starbucks manager who sued for racial discrimination and was awarded $25 million? Rogan and Segura didn't mention her or her award, but she had to settle out of court too, because when defendants lose and get hit with massive penalties, they threaten to ask for remittitur and/or appeal and keep you in court for as long as possible. I bought no Escalades, butt implants, crack, or anything else white conservative men on the internet think I bought. I went back to school so I can provide healthcare, and I have been paying my family's medical bills and home care attendants. That’s it. Actually, I bought a $300 dress and took a six-day vacation too. I'm basically Bezos now.

Why do you think people like them are so quick to jump to conclusions about cases like this? 

I think the easy answer is "people are racist," but that's not the whole truth. The reality is that most Americans are suffering. They are one flat tire or emergency room trip away from homelessness, they don't have child care, health insurance, food security, or enough time to rest and recover from long work days or illness. When people are suffering, they see someone else benefit from a minimum wage increase, more FMLA, or in my case justice under the law, and wonder why they're still hurting. It is easier to believe that Black people are lazy and game the system than it is to believe that I experienced a kind of abuse Rogan, Segura, or their fans haven't experienced, and—a complete anomaly—the law actually protected me. 

With regard to Rogan and Segura specifically though, I don't know. I always learned to punch up, not down—we don't shit on people with less privilege. Joe Rogan's net worth is $200 million, he heard about a Black woman who experienced such egregious racism at work that a predominantly-white jury heard all of the evidence and testimony and found in her favor, and without hesitation, made me the butt of his joke, a joke he uses AAVE to deliver. For what? What does he gain by punching down, unless his goal was to give his audience something to be riled up about?

What would you say to Rogan and Segura if you could respond to them directly?

I do not know. These are men of such wealth and privilege, I cannot imagine how I occupy a single square centimeter of space in their minds. Rogan has every resource on earth available to him, and didn't use one to look at the details of a story that apparently left such a lasting impression, he brought it up two full years later? I am grossed out by the callousness of using someone else's trauma as a dogwhistle to rabid, racist fans, but they don't owe me anything. Anyway, Tom Segura's Netflix show is trash.

Was it re-traumatizing to get pulled back into this? Do you feel as if it's gotten any easier with time? 

Honestly, it was really kind of painful and emotional. It was infuriating on the one hand, but I don't know—I'm Black. I live in America. So it's not like I ever had any delusions that the world was a good place, you know what I mean? But it just sucks to have to deal with that shit again. And I hadn't dealt with that since 2023. In 2023, every jackass with a YouTube channel had some shit to say. And it was gnarly because it was just like, first of all, none of the details of this case are secret information. None of it is sealed. And there was so much press surrounding it that it was like, you are making a decision to be a bigot right now. You are making a decision to say the most hateful things you can. And at the time, it was kind of scary.

So when this Rogan thing happened, I was like, "Am I about to need to be scared to leave my house again?" The first two weeks, I was terrified. Not because I think Donald Trump has changed anything about America—I think America is what it has always been. But just like the last Trump presidency, people have become way more bold. And so honestly, I was really concerned for my safety initially.

And I think that's part of why I think it's callous and quite reckless to spin someone's story to such a large audience and not do any background research or fact checking. Because the way that that was spun, especially considering he chose to do his best Black girl accent when he was talking shit.

Immediately before he was talking about my case, he was also talking shit about trans people and someone who had said that they were trans. It was just the most hateful tirade that I've seen in a while. And the majority of Rogan's audience is reasonably young white men who feel pretty neglected. And I don't blame them for their feelings. But when you're speaking to an audience like that, and you're presenting it as though some Black woman gamed the system, I don't know. 

Honestly, it just left me feeling really unsafe for two weeks. And I was like, "What am I going to do? I have to go to school. I have to work. I can either stay in my house until I feel like the world is safe again, or I can let as many people know the truth as possible, which isn't going to change anyone's mind, but it may make someone just pause before they jump to conclusions."

I was thinking about you this morning when I was writing about something Segura said in his podcast yesterday, where he was complaining to Bert Kreischer about how six years ago he used the r-slur in his special and went through such a shitty experience where people were trying to get it removed from Netflix, and he really was getting all these mean messages and thought his career was over. And I just wanted to grab him and say, "Imagine that, but about everyone who you talk about all the time on these things."

I think the other thing that's really upsetting about it is that I think I expect people to talk shit about other celebrities or, you know what I mean? I don't expect people with that much affluence to waste any time talking shit about a regular fucking person. And I don't know if these guys think that. I mean, clearly he didn't think I got the money since he said Equinox was going to appeal it. So if you know that I'm just some regular ass bitch what is your goal in trying to destroy me to your audience? What do you gain from this? Why? I'm not important. I really am not. I'm a regular-ass, fucking middle-aged student. It's just very frustrating.

Can you tell me about what you've been doing since this lawsuit? Do you feel that going through it changed you at all?

So the trial wrapped in May of 2023, and I do think that it changed a lot about the way that I live my life. One thing that I've been working on since 2023 is this bill that we're trying to get passed in New York. Basically, there's this widespread practice where when people win employment discrimination cases, judges arbitrarily decide if the jury has given them too much money. There's a really well-known case by a woman who had been relentlessly attacked by her co-workers and supervisor for being Muslim, started plucking her eyelashes out as a nervous tick, lost vision in one of her eyes, and the jury awarded her, I believe, $2 million, which seems like a tiny amount for you to lose your vision. 

But anyway. The judge in her case knocked it down to something like $100,000, and he said that that was the most he could offer her because this is garden variety pain and suffering. And she hadn't seen a therapist and she wasn't on medication, so there was no evidence that this was much worse than that. And her lawyers were like, she got fired, she couldn't afford to go to a therapist and be on medication. And that's really common.

So I've been working with the National Employment Lawyers Association to get that bill passed since 2023. And I've had some successes, which has been cool. I've gotten some assembly people to co-sponsor, and I got my senator to co-sponsor, which was awesome. And then on top of that, I'm in a doctorate program now. So I literally am a middle-aged student. I don't have time for anything else.

What are you studying?

Physical therapy. I'm just dissecting cadavers and brains and touching people's bones.

Oh, nice.

When I said that all I've really done is pay my family's medical bills, that's literally the only cool and fulfilling thing I've done with the money that I got. I was able to tell my dad he didn't have to come out of retirement to pay my grandmother's medical bills. I was able to just be like, "Don't worry about it. I got it. I'm not going to let anybody go without." And that was the most meaningful thing to me, to be able to tell my family this isn't going to be a thing where we all suffer forever.

I've gathered writing about and talking to people in similar situations, including another Susan Crumiller client a few years ago, that it takes tremendous willpower and fortitude to advocate for oneself for this long against such Herculean odds. Does it feel like that to you? How do you do it?

It's weird because I didn't feel strong while I was going through it. It felt like an obligation. My mom dealt with a lot of discrimination when she was building her career. She was a physician and she dealt with—it was crazy. She would come home from the hospital and just tell me all these horror stories. And it was the same thing for my grandmother. She came here as a nurse. She immigrated. And she's also told me all these horrible stories. A lot of my family is medical professionals, and the women in my family have just gone through so much to pursue these careers that they feel really strongly about.

And I felt like it wasn't an option to give up, because it really just felt like I would be telling all these people who broke their backs to make sure that I was okay growing up and that I went to school and that I was safe and fed and clothed, all these people who gave up so much for me, it felt like if I gave up on that case, I would be telling them I didn't have the strength to stand up for them. I wish I could tell you it was just about me. It really wasn't. It just felt like I really had to do it.

And also, I just kept thinking about the fact that when Equinox fired me, I left a bunch of Black employees there who now had to fend for themselves, and I would've felt really shitty if I left and told them, "Sorry, I couldn't do anything for you while I was there and I couldn't do anything for you after I left." So I mean, that was really it.

On a personal level, my father and grandmother have just been the most supportive people in my life from minute one. So I never felt like I was carrying any kind of burden alone. And as crazy as this might sound, the attorneys who worked on my case are so incredible, and I'm still friends with them all, and I still hang out with the lead attorney. They're such wonderful people. It was hard, but it never felt like I needed strength to do it, because I just had so many people around me supporting me and making sure I was okay, that it was just like, "It's alright, guys. We can get to the next day. It's fine."

Is there anything else you'd like people to know about your case or yourself? 

Yes. Civil rights, human rights, labor laws, exist to protect everyone, not just Black women at Equinox and white women at Starbucks. I am happy eight random strangers saw through the smoke Equinox tried to blow around this case, and unanimously agreed that workplace discrimination is wrong, and very expensive. The thing I am most happy about, however, is that when the law works as it should for working class people, it tells other workers "you deserve to feed your family, see doctors, and pay your bills without someone abusing you just because they sign your check."