She was on maternity leave when the email about her job went out without her
A Toronto District School Board project manager who was reassigned out of her team while pregnant, then left uninformed about the budget cuts that wiped out her job during her maternity leave, has won a pregnancy discrimination and reprisal ruling against her former employer.
In a decision dated May 27, 2026, adjudicator Denise Ghanam of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario found that the board discriminated against Tiffany Kartos because of sex (pregnancy) and reprised against her for asserting her rights under the Human Rights Code. A separate disability claim was dismissed, and a hearing on what the board must pay is set for June 29, 2026.
Kartos joined the board in 2014 as a project manager, hired by the senior manager who created the role to support information management and technology projects. After a 2017 miscarriage that required surgery and a three-month absence, and a second pregnancy late that year, her once-strong rapport with that manager began to deteriorate, the tribunal heard.
When she disclosed the second pregnancy in January 2018, she asked to work remotely on days when pregnancy-related illness kept her out of the office, and her physician provided four notes supporting the arrangement. The senior manager agreed informally but, the tribunal found, grew uneasy as her remote days added up, missing scheduled meetings and turning curt.
Tribunal questioned the restructuring
In May 2018, during a departmental restructuring, Kartos was moved out of her team and reassigned to the Research Department while most of her colleagues shifted to a revamped IT group. The board maintained that senior leaders made the decision and that her senior manager had no input.
Ghanam did not accept that explanation. She drew an adverse inference from the board's failure to call the superintendent it had identified as most responsible for the move, and another from a missing organizational chart the board could not account for. One of the applicant's witnesses, a former colleague, testified that the receiving department had no use for the role.
As that witness put it, "There was no need for a Project Manager in the Research and Development Department." The tribunal concluded the reassignment made little sense operationally and found that the applicant's pregnancy, along with assumptions about her anticipated maternity leave and possible future pregnancies, was a factor in the decision.
Kept off the email while on leave
While Kartos was on maternity leave in 2019, provincial budget cuts put her position among those targeted for elimination. The new head of the Research Department emailed staff on May 14, 2019, about a proposed reduction of research positions from 20 to 18, then met with employees about the cuts. Kartos was not copied on the email and was not invited to the meetings.
The board argued the termination was driven solely by budget cuts, not pregnancy. But Ghanam found that failing to keep an employee on a protected leave informed about changes that could end her job amounted to differential treatment connected to her sex. Kartos learned her position had been eliminated on the day she returned, August 9, 2019, and was terminated without cause effective September 6, 2019.
The tribunal also upheld the reprisal allegation, finding the applicant's assertion of her Code rights had influenced the decision to move her. On the failure to keep her informed during the restructuring, Ghanam wrote: "The differential treatment was, therefore, connected to her sex (pregnancy) and was discriminatory."
