A judge has dismissed a harassment claim from a lawsuit filed by a Black woman against the Boston Consulting Group in which the plaintiff alleges she was wrongfully fired from her job as a topic expert at the Los Angeles office in 2024, according to court papers obtained Tuesday.
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, other women and additional people of color, suffered at BCG. On Tuesday, Judge Rupert A. Byrdsong tossed out Leslie’s claim for harassment based on sex, gender, pregnancy or pregnancy disability.
The judge denied the company’s request to also dismiss Leslie’s causes of action for failure to prevent discrimination, harassment and retaliation as well as employment termination in violation of public policies. Byrdsong ordered Leslie to file a third amended complaint by June 1.
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 in January 2025. However, BCG lawyers filed a motion to force Leslie to use her real name and the judge granted it last 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 2025.
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 before her return, the suit states.