Black director sues CBS and Paramount, alleges HR ignored her for years

What followed, the complaint says, was a pattern of unequal treatment. Brown alleges she had to handle two or three jobs at once without extra pay, while white colleagues with the same Associate Director title kept their support staff. She says white employees who relocated to D.C. had their travel and lodging covered, while she paid her own way. And she claims she was passed over for a promotion she was qualified for, losing it to a white colleague under what she calls a pretextual, union-related excuse. 

The complaint also attributes a string of racially charged remarks to a named director. According to the filing, at their first meeting the director looked Brown over and said, “WELL WE KNOW YOUR NAILS ARE FAKE WHAT ELSE IS FAKE ON YOU?” The filing says the same person later called Brown’s nails “CLAWS” and, in September 2023, said Historically Black Colleges and Universities are places “WHERE ALL THE GIRLS ARE NAMED SHANIQUA.” A separate associate director is alleged to have made degrading comments tying Brown’s race to her time at Howard University. 

The part HR professionals should sit with is what Brown says happened when she spoke up. The complaint lists complaints she made – by email and in person, year after year – to supervisors, to a Senior Vice President, to the Vice President of Employee Relations, and to HR itself, from 2021 through 2024. Her claim is that little changed. The filing describes a “sham investigation” whose “foregone conclusion was solely for the protection and benefit of the company,” and alleges HR was “more concerned with protecting the company, rather than the company’s employees.” 

The complaint contrasts that with how it says the company handled other cases. Citing a New York Times report, the filing says CBS agreed “to pay her $9.5 Million dollars” to settle claims brought by actress Eliza Dushku, and argues that white employees’ complaints got investigated while Brown’s were brushed aside. Those earlier matters are pleaded as background, and the people involved were not parties to Brown’s case. 

Brown says she was terminated on or about November 20, 2024, then given a separation agreement she calls coercive, including an “unlawfully broad non-disclosure provision.”