A 61-year-old engineer says one pledge and one fast firing reveal what really cost him his job
A longtime Coca-Cola engineer says the company's push to fill half of leadership with women became an "illegal quota" that cost him his job.
Scott Seccuro, a Principal Fluidics Engineer who had worked at Coca-Cola since November 2015, sued the company on May 27, 2026, in federal court in Atlanta. He alleges gender and age discrimination and retaliation under Title VII and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In the alternative, he claims he was fired as a whistleblower under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.
The heart of the case is a pledge HR leaders will recognize. From 2018 to 2023, Coca-Cola publicly promoted what the complaint calls its "50/50 by 2030 Campaign," a goal to employ equal numbers of men and women in leadership by 2030. The filing says the company stopped advertising it after 2023 but kept hiring and promoting toward the same target.
Seccuro says that goal worked against him. In November 2023, he alleges, Coca-Cola told him he was left off a promotion slate because it "desired a more broadly diversified candidate slate." A manager, Sam Orr, praised him in the same email as "one of the few people in this building who can blend technical experience with client services," according to the complaint. Seccuro says he reapplied and interviewed well, and that a manager identified as Lactaoen then told him the company would hire an external female candidate despite his qualifications.
The complaint calls the company's parity practices "an illegal quota system" that set aside leadership roles by gender. That is the line every HR team running diversity targets should sit with.
The age claim came next. On February 27, 2025, after a colleague wished him a happy birthday, his new supervisor, Vice President Gigy Phillips, asked his age in front of about twenty people, the filing says. Seccuro, then 61, alleges Phillips said, "you don't look sixty-one," and jotted something in a notebook.
Less than a month later, on March 26, 2025, an HR representative named Marian Coleman told Seccuro that "charges" had been brought against him over comments and gestures that allegedly offended co-workers, according to the complaint. The filing says Coleman pressed him on whether he blamed DEI for a missed promotion and whether he agreed with DEI policies. Seccuro says he declined to discuss his political beliefs and denies any offensive conduct.
On April 4, 2025, according to the complaint, Coca-Cola told him he had been found guilty of making derogatory comments and gestures and fired him that day, with no written findings, no prior discipline in nearly ten years, and no severance.
A separate, alternative claim adds a food-safety layer. Seccuro alleges he reported three problems with Coca-Cola's Freestyle dispensers - drinks carrying more calories than labeled and reported to the FDA, mold and mildew in water tubing, and rust in flow-control valves - and was repeatedly told to stop. He says the tubing problem "had been subject to prior litigation for similar issues," and claims he was fired for refusing to let the issues go.
For HR, this is a tidy stress test. Can a public gender-parity goal be recast as a quota? Does an investigation built on undisclosed "charges," with no written findings, look like pretext? Does an age remark followed by a fast firing read as bias? And it pairs an EEOC charge with an OSHA complaint - proof that a single termination can run on two agency tracks at once.
The allegations have not been tested in court. Coca-Cola has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled. The complaint reflects only the plaintiff’s account.
