Troutman Pepper Sued by Black Associate Alleging Bias, Reprisal

A Black female attorney says Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP discriminated against her because of her race, then retaliated against and ultimately fired her for complaining about the bias.

The firm’s mistreatment of Gita Sankano and other Black lawyers, especially Black women, belies its public representations that it’s “committed to diversity, equity and inclusion,” according to the suit filed Wednesday in federal court in the District of Columbia.

Troutman Pepper “has engaged in a number of disingenuous internal and external public relations maneuvers” to convince clients and prospective recruits that DEI is one of its core values, Sankano says. That included asking her to attend a dinner at Howard University School of Law not long after she complained again about race discrimination and just two weeks before it fired her for bogus performance reasons, Sankano says.

At the Nov. 14 dinner, a recruiter in Troutman Pepper’s Atlanta office told Sankano that the firm had experienced a “mass exodus” of Black associates, according to the suit. That didn’t surprise Sankano, who was the only Black lawyer in the firm’s D.C. office when she joined Troutman Pepper in 2019, the suit says.

Sankano, who was terminated just two weeks later, says she was “subjected to constant discriminatory treatment by” partners during her tenure with the firm. Her complaints about the mistreatment were either ignored or gas-lighted, or they spurred retaliatory job action, she says.

“Ms. Sankano’s employment was terminated for legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons based solely on her performance,” Troutman Pepper said Wednesday in a statement. “We will defend ourselves vigorously in this case.”

Demeaning Email

Things “came to a head” in early August when she received “another outrageously demeaning, dehumanizing and demoralizing email” from a partner, who “callously insulted” her cognitive ability, Sankano says. That “was unfortunately characteristic of his behavior towards her and other Black women,” she says.

None of the five other partners who Sankano complained to took any remedial action, and she ultimately had to complain to the firm’s senior human resources manager, the suit says. In all, it took Troutman Pepper 77 days to investigate Sankano’s HR complaint and during that time the firm “shamelessly attempted” to get her to resign, according to the suit.

Troutman Pepper concluded that the partner who sent the demeaning email hadn’t discriminated against her based on race, but “no real investigation was done,” Sankano says. The firm decided to fire her without talking to the Black attorney for whom she had been performing at least 80% of her work, Sankano says.

That the performance-based justification for terminating Sankano was false is shown by the uniformly “above average” reviews she received “each and every” review cycle during her tenure, and by the “multiple, large discretionary bonuses” she was awarded, including one shortly before she was fired, the suit says.

“It is impossible that the Firm terminated Ms. Sankano for ‘performance’ without even communicating with the person for whom she did the vast majority of her work,” the suit says. Troutman Pepper’s DEI partner for the group in which Sankano worked and the only other senior Black partner in that group also weren’t told that Sankano was going to be fired, according to the suit.

The suit includes claims under 42 U.S.C. §1981 and the District of Columbia Human Rights Act. Sankano seeks compensatory and punitive damages, injunctive relief, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

Wigdor LLP represents Sankano.

The case is Sankano v. Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP, D.D.C., No. 1:24-cv-00142, complaint filed 1/17/24.