The employee, Nicole Moore, who is Black, says she was expected to take on more work than her white colleagues, was denied opportunities to advance and was fired after she complained.
A former senior Planned Parenthood employee sued the reproductive rights organization on Wednesday, claiming that she was racially discriminated against while working at the company’s national offices in New York City.
The complaint is the latest allegation of racism within the organization, which has acknowledged recent frustrations among Black employees, as well as its founder’s difficult legacy on race, and has vowed to make changes.
The plaintiff, Nicole Moore — a Black woman who worked as the director of multicultural brand engagement at the Manhattan headquarters in 2020 and 2021 — said she was expected to take on more work than her white colleagues, was denied opportunities to advance or lead and was retaliated against when she raised these concerns. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
In the complaint, Ms. Moore described instances in which she says she was publicly humiliated and berated in front of other colleagues by a supervisor. Ms. Moore also said that her work, which focused on outreach and campaigns geared toward Black and Latina audiences, was undervalued and understaffed. When Ms. Moore took these concerns to leaders at Planned Parenthood, she said she was retaliated against and eventually fired.
“I feel that I am being discriminated against as a result of me speaking up and speaking out about biased practices and inequity,” Ms. Moore wrote in an email to her supervisors and to human resources that is included in the complaint. She added, “For asking questions about what seems to be a lack of equity and inclusion, I am being unfairly punished and accused of undermining senior leadership.”
Susan Manning, the interim general counsel for Planned Parenthood, said “we strongly dispute the plaintiff’s allegations and categorically deny her claims of discrimination.”
The organization’s “top priority for our dedicated staff is building a culture of diversity across the organization to fulfill our mission of reproductive health for all,” Ms. Manning said.
The lawsuit comes at a critical moment for Planned Parenthood, which has been working to regroup since the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June. Planned Parenthood has closed clinics and halted abortion services in states that now ban or severely restrict abortion, and it is engaged in several lawsuits to try to prevent abortion bans from being enforced.
Ms. Moore’s lawsuit echoes similar complaints made by Black employees in an internal audit in 2020 and reported by BuzzFeed News. The assessment, commissioned by Planned Parenthood, found that Black employees at the company’s national office felt they were placed under greater scrutiny than their white colleagues, often expected to work more hours and in more limited roles. At the time, Planned Parenthood responded by saying it would hold itself “accountable and more truly fulfill our mission of reproductive freedom for all.”
Another lawsuit was filed this year on behalf of Ms. Moore’s former supervisor, Ilana Gamza-Machado de Souza, who claims she was fired from Planned Parenthood for complaining about antisemitism at the organization. Ms. Gamza-Machado de Souza also alerted more senior managers to Ms. Moore’s complaints, according to Ms. Moore’s suit.
Planned Parenthood has been publicly reckoning with allegations of racism, including critiques of its founder, Margaret Sanger, who believed in eugenics and was linked to white supremacist groups. In recent years, the organization has said it was hiring more senior Black leaders while investing in diversity, equity and inclusion.
“Some might see this as virtue signaling, but Planned Parenthood is taking this work seriously,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the second Black woman to lead the organization, wrote in a New York Times guest essay last year. “Our senior leadership team is diverse. We have invested in training designed to give everyone, from the boardroom to the exam room, a foundational understanding of how race operates.”
According to the complaint, Ms. Moore said she was admonished for questioning why no Black employees were promoted from her 75-person department during the organization’s annual promotion period in 2021. (Twenty percent of the department was Black.) A few months later, Ms. Moore complained to senior leaders about the racial disparity in the workload over handling of “observances” — events like Black Maternal Health Week and Pride Month — stating that she was expected to handle all of the Black observances while her white colleagues were assigned less work. She was told that her accusations were “inappropriate,” according to the complaint.
Ms. Moore said that when she spoke out about her own mistreatment and the racial disparities she had experienced, she was either ignored or retaliated against. The company put Ms. Moore on a performance improvement plan in November 2020 and again in September 2021, and then terminated her employment in October 2021, according to the complaint.
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Former Employee Sues Planned Parenthood Over Alleged Racism - The New York Times
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