Former vice president of talent acquisition Jill Prejean has sued Infosys for age and sex discrimination in the US, claiming that the IT company treated her unfairly and retaliated against her.

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A US judge has rejected Infosys’s motion to dismiss claims of Preejan, who alleged that she was fired for raising concerns about discriminatory preferences in hiring practices, according to documents seen by the Times of India.

Prejean has been allowed to proceed with the discrimination and the retaliation claims against former Infosys SVP and head of consulting Mark Livingston and former partners Dan Albright and Jerry Kurtz. Livingston was with Infosys for nearly four years. He then left the firm in July this year.

Prejean alleged in an amended complaint filed in September last year that she joined Infosys and discovered a "rampant culture of illegal discriminatory animus among the partner level executives based on age, gender, and caregiver status."

When she met with them to determine Infosys's hiring requirements and preferences, she claimed in the filing that she "tried to change this culture within the first two months of her employment" but was met with "resistance from (then Infosys partners) Jerry Kurtz and Dan Albright, who became hostile in the face of her objections and sought to circumvent her authority to evade compliance with the law."

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The complaint goes on to state that she "received an order to institute such unlawful hiring criteria" when a new supervisor, Mark Livingston, the former head of consulting at Infosys, was hired and that her objections "resulted in a direct and immediate threat to her job, and ultimately did cost her job."

Specifically, she alleged that Livingston demanded that Prejean should "not put forward candidates for jobs who were over 50 years of age and women who had children at home."

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First Published:Oct 7, 2022 1:34 PM IST