PHILADELPHIA (LN) — U.S. District Judge Wendy Beetlestone ruled Wednesday that Nicole Tomiak’s sex discrimination claims against Unilog Content Solutions, LLC, can proceed to a jury, but granted summary judgment on her retaliation and hostile work environment allegations.
Tomiak, a former Demand Generation Manager at the e-commerce platform provider, alleged that her supervisor, Benjamin Stump, discriminated against her because of her pregnancy and maternity leave.
The court granted summary judgment on Tomiak’s pregnancy discrimination claims because she was not pregnant of her termination and failed to tie her claim to childbirth or related medical conditions. However, the court found that she presented sufficient evidence of sex-based stereotyping to survive summary judgment on her sex discrimination claims.
Stump made several comments to colleagues and executives regarding Tomiak’s focus on her baby. According to Tomiak’s account, which the court accepted for summary judgment purposes, Stump told her that downloading a security app to watch her daughter at daycare was not a “good idea because she would never do any work, never get any work done.”
During an investor meeting, Tomiak alleges that Stump added that she did not ask questions because she was “too busy looking at her watch to see if it’s time to pick the baby up” and had “mommy brain.” Stump denies making this comment, and other witnesses who attended the meeting do not recall it.
Beetlestone wrote that these comments, along with Stump’s deposition testimony that he always kept in mind that new mothers might not return from leave, manifested sex-based stereotypes about working mothers and portrayed Tomiak as less dedicated to her job.
The judge noted that this bias comprises one facet of the “maternal wall,” a term that broadly describes how working mothers’ professional competence is often unfairly measured using traditional conceptions of gender roles.
Unilog argued that Tomiak’s termination was part of a legitimate reduction in force driven by financial distress and that Stump’s comments were stray remarks insufficient to prove pretext.
The court rejected the “stray remark” defense, distinguishing the case from Third Circuit precedent where a single comment was deemed insufficient. Beetlestone found that Tomiak’s evidence went beyond a single remark and that the comments were made close to the time of her termination.
The court also noted that on the same day Tomiak was fired, Unilog hired a man, Gordon McDonough, to perform duties that overlapped with her role.
However, Beetlestone dismissed Tomiak’s retaliation claims under the Family and Medical Leave Act and Title VII, finding she failed to identify evidence that Unilog’s cost-cutting rationale was pretextual.
Tomiak argued that the company’s hiring of other employees and sparing of the marketing department in a prior reduction in force contradicted its claim of financial distress, but the court found those decisions predated the financial difficulties that prompted her termination.
The judge also dismissed Tomiak’s hostile work environment claim, ruling that Stump’s comments and the reassignment of her duties were not “severe or pervasive” enough to alter the conditions of her employment.
Beetlestone concluded that while the comments were offensive and shed insight on the motives for her termination, they did not rise to the level of “humiliating” conduct required for a hostile work environment claim.
Stump was terminated by Unilog due to budget constraints in October 2024, according to a footnote in the opinion.