Litigation Support Company Hit With Pregnancy Discrimination Lawsuit
Another gender discrimination case in the legal industry.
A litigation support company, Dallas-based Courtroom Sciences Inc. (CSI), has been sued by a former account representative, Megan Cartwright, for gender discrimination and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and under the FMLA. The lawsuit alleges CSI engaged in pregnancy discrimination, resulting in Cartwright being terminated just 10 days before her scheduled C-section.
According to the complaint, Cartwright was written up and put on a performance plan for not hitting a monthly sales quota a month after she told the company she was pregnant. She further alleges that men and non-pregnant women at the company were not disciplined when they failed to meet sales targets. The complaint also says Cartwright asked managers for help meeting the targets, but never received it, while other, non-pregnant, employees were “gifted” certain accounts to make their numbers.
As reported by Law.com, when Cartwright complained about the disparate treatment, she was reprimanded:
“Plaintiff complained to her manager that she was being treated differently than these account executives and her manager responded that she was ‘being a lazy sales rep,’” the petition alleged.
Cartwright also alleges she was asked to resign from the company for not meeting her sales quotas, and was eventually fired, 10 days before she was scheduled to give birth:
CSI asked her to resign in September 2018, but she refused because she was concerned about her pregnancy and needed to work, according to her pleading. She kept striving to meet her quota and believed she met that goal in the last month of her performance improvement plan.
“Even so, and without notice, plaintiff was terminated on Nov. 9, 2018—a mere 10 days before she was scheduled to have a C-section,” the complaint said.
CSI has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).
