Nasty Gal Accused of Illegally Firing Pregnant Employees

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Jezebel reports that Nasty Gal is being sued by a former employee who alleges that Nasty Gal illegally fired her and three other pregnant women, as well as one man about to take paternity leave. Ex-Nasty Gal employee Aimee Concepcion's lawsuit accuses Nasty Gal of systematically and illegally terminating pregnant employees. Concepcion is seeking unspecified damages for pregnancy discrimination, breach of contract, and wrongful termination.

Concepcion said she received stellar reviews for her work heading up Nasty Gal's newly-formed Home section, where she was recruited from Urban Outfitters and moved cross-country to work at Nasty Gal. But when she told her supervisors she was pregnant, Concepcion alleges that Nasty Gal said they didn’t need to provide her with maternity leave because, by the time of her due date, she would have only been an employee for nine months.

Concepcion was then abruptly laid off, not for performance-related reasons, but because the company was "reassessing their budgets." The suit alleges that she was included in that particular wave of layoffs even though she wasn't in the PR and tech department, but because she was pregnant and needed to take leave. Concepcion also says that Nasty Gal tried to force her to sign a severance agreement waiving her right to sue them.

The lawsuit states: "Despite Plantiff’s excellent performance, Plantiff’s employment with Nasty Gal was doomed from the minute she found out she was pregnant. Unfortunately for Plantiff and a number of coworkers, Nasty Gal has shown itself to be a horrible place to work for professional women who become pregnant and where discrimination runs rampant...Instead of providing such mandated leave and reinstatement, Nasty Gal terminates pregnant employees so that it does not have to deal with what it perceives to be as the inconveniences of dealing with pregnant employees (including providing them with maternity leave)."

One of the other pregnant women who was fired reportedly found out just before a baby shower her co-workers had planned on throwing her. That is more along the lines of Nasty Gal's horror-show Glassdoor reviews than founder Sophia Amoruso's millennial girl-power #GIRLBOSS reputation.

Update: A Nasty Gal spokesperson issued the following statement to Racked: "The accusations made in the lawsuits are false, defamatory and taken completely out of context. The layoffs in question were part of a larger restructuring of departments we completed over nine months ago. The lawsuits are frivolous and without merit."