Comcast Corp. may have discriminated against a black-owned network in refusing to contract with it to distribute its shows, says a federal appeals court, in reversing a lower court ruling and reinstating the network’s lawsuit.

Los Angeles-based Entertainment Studios Networks Inc., an African American-owned television network operator, has sought for more than a decade to secure a contract from Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp., the largest cable television distribution company in the United States, according to Monday’s ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in National Association of African American-Owned Media; Entertainment Studios Networks Inc. v. Comcast Corp.

Entertainment Studios and the NAAAM filed suit in U.S. District Court in Pasadena, California, claiming its refusal to contract with the network was racially motivated.

The district court dismissed the case, which a three-judge appeals court panel unanimously reversed. The plaintiffs’ complaint “includes sufficient allegations from which we can plausibly infer that Entertainment Studios experienced disparate treatment due to race and was thus denied the same right to contract as a white-owned company,” said the ruling.

“These allegations include: Comcast’s expressions of interest followed by repeated refusals to contract; Comcast’s practice of suggesting various methods of security support for carriage only to reverse its position once Entertainment Studios had taken these steps; the fact that Comcast carried every network of the approximately 500 that were also carried by its main competitors…except Entertainment Studios’ channels; and, most importantly, Comcast’s decision to offer carriage contracts to ‘lesser-known white-owned’ networks…at the same time it informed Entertainment Studios that it had no bandwidth or carriage capacity.

“Although Comcast notes that legitimate, race-neutral reasons for its conduct are contained within the (complaint), when considered in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, we cannot conclude that these alternative explanations are so compelling as to render Plaintiffs’ theory of racial animus implausible,” said the ruling.

“We can infer from the allegations in the (complaint) that discriminatory intent played at least some role in Comcast’s refusal to contact with Entertainment Studios, thus denying the latter the same right to contract as a white-owned company,” said the ruling, in reversing the lower court ruling and remanding the case.