A Black woman suing the Boston Consulting Group, alleging she was wrongfully fired from her job as a topic expert at the Los Angeles office in 2024, can proceed with most of her lawsuit but two claims need shoring up, a judge has ruled.
Plaintiff Lauren Leslie contends in her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that she lost her job in retaliation for speaking out against the harassment and discrimination that she contends she, as well as other women and other people of color, suffered at BCG. On Wednesday, Judge Rupert A. Byrdsong overruled defense challenges to Leslie’s claims for retaliation, discrimination, harassment, termination in violation of public policy and failure to prevent discrimination, harassment and retaliation.
However, the judge said Leslie will need to further explain her claims for failure to accommodate disability or pregnancy condition and failure to engage in the interactive process as well as her allegation of intentional infliction of emotional distress. Byrdsong gave Leslie 10 days to file an amended complaint.
According to the BCG attorneys court papers, Leslie was fired for poor performance. The lawyers state that in 2023 Leslie violated BCG policy, resulting in disciplinary action. Later, she performed so poorly on a project that BCG’s client demanded she be removed and her work on her next project was so abysmal that she alienated not only her clients but also her colleagues, according to the BCG lawyers’ pleadings.
Leslie was originally identified only as Jane Leslie in her original complaint filed Jan. 14. However, BCG lawyers filed a motion to force Leslie to use her real name and the judge granted it on June 9.
BCG is an American global management consulting firm headquartered in Boston and is one of the nation’s three largest by revenue. Leslie began working for the firm in October 2018 as a topic expert in the Los Angeles office and was in the top 10% to 30% of talent on the basis of her 12 scored reviews, according to the suit, which further states that she was projected by management to become a managing director and partner by this year.
But Leslie’s standing at BCG changed once she became active in advocating for certain groups, including women and minorities, the suit states.
“She went from being a highly valued, high-performing employee to a problem employee when she continued her efforts to affect BCG’s statistical underrepresentation of women and people of color in its upper ranks,” according to the complaint.
Leslie and others shared during a presentation that white employees often engaged in harassment, such as commenting on and touching a Black employee’s hair or calling Black employees “diversity hires,” the suit states.
When she returned from maternity leave after the birth of her second child, the company began its efforts to push her out, the suit alleges, citing as an example BCGs delay of her promotion to partner from July of 2023 to January of 2024.
Leslie, who had a history of postpartum depression, found her condition worsened by the alleged discrimination and retaliation at work after a 2023 miscarriage, the suit states. She took a medical leave in December 2023 with the expectation of returning on March 13, 2024, but she was fired five days earlier, the suit states.