The multi-year sexual harassment legal saga involving Wynn Resorts, its founder and former CEO Steve Wynn and nine anonymous female employees has officially been closed, after U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro signed off on the settlement agreement that was reached last September.
Terms of the settlement agreement were not and will not be disclosed, but Navarro’s approval grants a stipulation for dismissal with prejudice, meaning that the case is now formally closed and cannot be relitigated.
The suit was first filed in September 2019 in state court, and was escalated to U.S. District Court soon after. Given that none of the plaintiffs were identified, and were instead referred to as Jane Does 1-9, the case was dismissed in July 2020 for issues related to vagueness and ambiguity by federal judge James Mahan.
From there it went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which, in October 2021, ruled to remand the matter back to District Court under Judge Navarro, until a settlement was eventually reached.
In the suit, the women—who all worked in the Wynn and Encore salons—accused Wynn of several forms of sexual harassment, including asking inappropriate sexual questions, forcing workers to touch and massage him near his groin, and requiring them to provide services in secluded locations away from their work stations, including in Wynn’s personal office.
Throughout the entirety of the process, Wynn has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, and has not been convicted of any criminal charges.
The case may now be formally closed, but it was certainly costly for both Wynn and his former company—once the accusations were first made public by the Wall Street Journal in January 2018, the casino mogul resigned in February and sold all of his equity for $2.1 billion in March of that year.
He has since lived a reclusive life in Florida, and last July he agreed to pay a $10 million fine to the Nevada Gaming Commission to close all claims related to the case. Included in the agreement was the stipulation that Wynn may never work directly or indirectly in the Nevada gaming industry again.
That said, Wynn’s personal punishments pale in comparison to those administered to his company.
In February 2019, the Nevada Gaming Control Board fined Wynn Resorts a record $20 million for violations related to the claims. Shortly after, the Massachusetts Gaming Commission took it one step further with a $35 million fine, specifically for failing to disclose the claims when applying for a license there. Furthermore, the project was renamed from Wynn Boston Harbor to Encore Boston Harbor in efforts to keep Wynn’s name off of the property.
In addition to the monetary damages, the company was also forced to transform its board and C-suite and implement new governing policies to prevent future incidents.
