Parents sue law firm over leave, wages and a firing
Jones Day, one of the nation’s largest law firms, faced a harsh spotlight this year when six female lawyers filed a classaction complaint saying they had faced gender and pregnancy discrimination while working there and had been subjected to a “fraternity culture.”
Now the glare has intensified, with a couple formerly employed at Jones Day charging in a federal lawsuit that the firm discriminated in its parentalleave policies, and that the husband was fired after he questioned the practice.
The complaint, filed last week, maintains that the firm and some of its partners promoted crude stereotypes about gender roles, with a prominent male partner asking rhetorically, “What would a man do on parental leave — watch his wife unload the dishwasher?” The same partner, the suit says, teased a male associate for taking parental leave to care for a child.
The plaintiffs are Mark Savignac and Julia Sheketoff, who worked in the firm’s elite appellate practice in Washington. Their lawsuit asserts that Jones Day’s policy unlawfully denied Savignac the full leave he was entitled to after their son was born in January and that it unlawfully fired him when he complained about the policy.
“I was shocked; we truly never considered that they would fire me,” Savignac said. “We thought the law was so obvious.”
Under the firm’s policy, biological mothers who seek to be a primary caregiver receive 10 weeks of paid family leave plus eight weeks of disability leave, while biological fathers who seek to be a primary caregiver receive 10 weeks of family leave. The firm also awards new adoptive parents of either gender 18 weeks of paid leave if they seek to be a primary caregiver.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has held that employers can award biological mothers eight weeks more paid leave than biological fathers if the additional time is tied to their recovery from the physical toll of childbirth.
But in their legal complaint, Savignac and Sheketoff argue that Jones Day awards mothers eight additional weeks of paid leave without regard to whether their physical condition warrants it. The plaintiffs write that the policy gives “female associates more time to enable their husbands to prioritize their careers over child care” and “reflects and reinforces archaic gender roles and sexbased stereotypes.”
Cynthia Thomas Calvert, who advises employers about familyleave policies, said the claim’s fate would hinge on determining whether the policy was intended to provide greater accommodation to recovering mothers, or more time for bonding with a child. If meant to foster bonding, the time is supposed to be equal for fathers and mothers. Advocates argue that policies making it easier for fathers to assume domestic responsibilities help overcome an assumption that mothers are less devoted to their careers.
David Lopez, a former general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said Savignac appeared to have a strong claim that his firing was unlawful. Savignac was fired three business days after he and Sheketoff said in an email to the firm that the leave policy was discriminatory, and he had previously earned strong performance reviews, according to the complaint.
Jones Day defended its policy, saying it grants birth mothers eight weeks of paid disability leave to avoid having to ask for medical evidence that they are still recovering from childbirth. The firm said the firing of Savignac had not been in retaliation for criticizing the leave policy, which it said he and Sheketoff had done in 2018 without repercussions. Rather, it said, it fired him because he had shown a “lack of courtesy” to colleagues and an “open hostility to the firm,” citing his email.
The firm also said its adoptionleave policy reflected the unique demands that adoptive parents can face, like foreign travel and legal proceedings.
Jones Day’s policy is at odds with a trend in which companies are increasingly eliminating the distinction between fathers and mothers or primary and secondary caregivers. They award all employees the same amount of family leave for a new child, though women who give birth can sometimes receive additional time to recover through disability leave.
Jones Day has risen to prominence in recent years thanks partly to its ties to President Trump, whose campaigns it has represented. Several lawyers joined the administration from the firm, including Don McGahn, Trump’s first White House counsel.
Savignac said he had been on parental leave for a few weeks when the firm emailed to say that he was fired, effective that day. He said that he asked Sheketoff to sit down and hand him their infant, for fear she might drop the baby upon hearing the news.
According to the lawsuit, after Jones Day fired Savignac, it refused to allow two partners who had worked closely with him and previously praised his work to recommend him to prospective employers. Savignac said he had applied to dozens of firms without receiving an offer before accepting an offer in June. Sheketoff left the firm while pregnant last year to work for a public defender’s office, where she took a substantial pay cut.
Separately, the couple contends that the firm paid Sheketoff less than it would have paid a man because of her gender.
“Julia’s salary was cut in relative terms based on a negative review from a partner who, in hindsight, clearly treated her worse because she is a woman,” said the couple’s email to the human resources director included in the complaint.
Jones Day denied that it had discriminated against Sheketoff and said that “her reviews from multiple partners were mixed.”
Sheketoff was at Jones Day for almost four years, and Savignac was there about 20 months.
Their allegations echo those in the classaction complaint against Jones Day, filed in April, that spoke of a “fraternity culture.” That lawsuit, pending in federal court, contends that women who give birth face obstacles to advancement at the firm, and that women who have a second child are often asked to leave within a few months of returning to work.
Both lawsuits describe a “black box” compensation system in which the firm’s managing partner, Stephen J. Brogan, sets pay for associates. The complaints argue that this system enables pay discrimination against women.
Most large firms pay associates according to a socalled lockstep system, in which salaries are based on seniority, although bonuses can vary.
In a legal filing responding to the classaction complaint, Jones Day said that Brogan performs “a highlevel review of proposed associate compensation adjustments” and denied that the system results in lower pay for women.
The firm said two plaintiffs in the earlier lawsuit had been asked to leave the firm after the birth of a second child because of “performance issues.”